Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards announced today that his wife Elizabeth was again diagnosed with cancer, but that he would be continuing his campaign for the Democratic nomination:
Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) announced today he would stay in the 2008 presidential race even though his wife Elizabeth’s breast cancer has recurred and spread to the bone and will require further treatment.
“The campaign goes on,” he said. “The campaign goes on strongly.”
Sad news, and hopefully all will go well for the Edwards family.
There’s an interesting twist to this. Right before the press conference started in Chapel Hill, Ben Smith posted this on his blog at Politico:
John Edwards is suspending his campaign for President, and may drop out completely, because his wife has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that sickened her in 2004, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, an Edwards friend told The Politico.
“At a minimum he’s going to suspend” the campaign, the source said. “Nobody knows precisely how serious her recurrence is. It?ll be another couple of days before there?s complete clarity.”
“For him right now he has one priority which is her health and the security of the two young children,” said the friend.
As for the campaign, “You don’t shut this machine off completely, but everything will go on hold.”
This was picked up by several others. Drudge linked to it, Rush Limbaugh mentioned on the air. By Noon, it was almost impossible to connect to Politico at all because of the traffic that was generated. It was, of course, untrue, and Smith has updated the post to reflect that. But he’s also written a separate post explaining why this happened:
A single, confident source close to John Edwards told me this morning that Edwards was “suspending his campaign,” and I posted it to the blog at 11:06 this morning.
My source, and I, were wrong.
The source, whose anonymity I agreed to respect, spoke of the kind of grim prognosis Elizabeth Edwards herself just described hearing before a second round of tests came back. I trusted the source, somebody I’ve known for several years, and who has always been reliable.
And with less than an hour before Edwards was to announce, I unwisely wrote the item without getting a second source.
Smith goes on to say he should’ve checked with a second source before posting the report, but his candor is refreshing.
