John Edwards has reported $29.5 million in personal assets to the FEC, of which his aides have told the Wall Street Journal $16.1 million is invested in Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund that invests in Humana, the health insurance company that comes in for sharp criticism in Michael Moore's blockbuster movie "Sicko."Swanson goes on to imply, unfairly and in the face of a lot of contrary evidence, that Edwards is supporting an individual-mandate approach to health coverage reform on account of his investments in insurers. The background to all of this is that Swanson supports Dennis Kucinich's single-payer approach (as well as Kucinich, in general, for whom he was campaign press secretary in 2004), and is upset that Edwards appeared to express interest in seeing Kucinich excluded from further debates. Why is this relevant, you ask? Because a rift between Edwards and Kucinich supporters could have important consequences in the Iowa caucuses.Edwards does not just invest in Fortress. It also invests in him, to the tune of $1.7 million in pay and investment income, including $479,512 in salary for a year of "part-time consulting" that began in October 2005. And then there are the campaign contributions. According to the Associated Press:
"Fortress was the single biggest employer of Edwards donors during the first three months of the year. Donors who listed 'Fortress' as their employer contributed $67,450 to Edwards' campaign and supporters who identified their employer as 'Fortress Investment Group' gave $55,200 to the campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records.
"While he resigned as an adviser to Fortress once he decided to run for president," reports the New York Times, Edwards "still has between $11 million and $24 million of his personal wealth invested in Fortress. This represents the bulk of his financial assets. In addition, employees of Fortress are also leading contributors to Mr. Edwards campaign."
Last cycle, it was anti-war stalwart Howard Dean whom Kucinich supporters came to loathe -- bringing to mind the truism that there are no two enemies so fierce as two of the same sort -- and when they failed to meet the 15 percent viability threshold in the Iowa caucuses, Kucinich backers threw their support to Edwards during the re-alignment phase of the caucuses, boosting his delegate total and helping him come in second statewide. If, this time around, it is Edwards whom the Kucinich supporters find an irritant, that would create a small population of non-viable delegates in Iowa ready to boost someone other than him in January. Such support can make a difference in a close contest, especially in the more liberal precincts in the Des Moines area.The spats between the big candidates get far more attention, but, presuming everyone stays in the race until January, the relationships between the non-viable candidates like Kucinich and the second and first tier ones will be of some importance, too.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
