Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2004 | 10:59 a.m.
Her staff was trying to hurry her along, so they sighed Tuesday when a reporter asked Elizabeth Edwards about medical malpractice reform.
It was, apparently, the right question to get her talking.
Edwards, the wife of Sen. John Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, is well-known for being one of the more personable faces on the Democratic ticket, someone who talks publicly about her weight struggles and how she misses her children on the campaign trail.
But in a trip to Las Vegas on Tuesday, the 55-year-old wasn't afraid to mix her Southern charm with a knowledge of issues in an hourlong session in a blazing hot room in which the main topics were military benefits and pay.
The crowd or more than 75 people was dotted with undecided voters and Republicans who voted for Bush in 2000.
That's just the way Edwards likes it.
"This is the time for us to use venues like this to answer questions," she said.
Later, in the back of the restaurant, she told newspaper reporters that Edwards supports Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's promise to stop Yucca Mountain.
Edwards, she said, has voted against the project because he had concerns about safety. He did, however, cast a pro-Yucca "procedural" vote after the nuclear industry promised to upgrade safety for North Carolina, she said.
"He was making a concession in order to get the safety concessions in North Carolina," she said.
Should Edwards ever become president, he would uphold Kerry's promise to stop the project, she said.
"We need to find a safer way than digging a hole," she said.
And, she said, medical malpractice reform such as the cap on damages to appear on Nevada's November ballot isn't the answer to rising insurance rates.
Instead, she advocates penalizing attorneys that bring up too many frivolous lawsuits, weeding out the 5 percent of doctors who cause 50 percent of the medical malpractice suits, and coming to terms with the fact that insurance companies suffered their greatest losses from stock market reverses.
Profits, she said, "are a direct reflection of what happens in the stock market."
The jury system of awarding damages isn't perfect, but it's the best system around, she said.
"It doesn't mean that they're always going to get it right," she said. "But they're going to get it right more than they get it wrong."
Edwards' voice is calm while she speaks, even as she offers pointed criticism of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who said in his Monday speech to the Republican National Convention that when he was watching the towers burn on Sept. 11, 2001, he turned to Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and said, "Thank God George Bush is our president."
"No one in that moment of horror would have made a statement like that," she said.
She has been lauded on the campaign trail as a down-to-earth person -- a "mother earth" figure, as Teresa Heinz Kerry described her.
"She spoke in simple terms that a layman could understand," said 69-year-old Harriet Bernstein of Las Vegas after Edwards' talk in Las Vegas.
"She is a real person," added Harriet's sister, 63-year-old Roz Tessler.
Edwards told a the crowd of people in the military, veterans and their families -- some who support Bush -- that Bush has advocated for them.
But, she added, he also cut hospital benefits for some veterans with service-related injuries, advocated a $250 enrollment fee to use veterans hospitals, closed veterans hospitals and cut hazardous duty pay benefits.
"You have these two men who are running for office," she said. "You have to ask, whose side are they on?' "
Kerry would increase military pay and benefits partly because "he's been there," she said. That includes stopping the remaining limits on concurrent receipts, which require veterans to deduct the pay they receive for disabilities from their military retirement.
"Senator Kerry is absolutely committed to getting rid of this tax on disabled veterans," she said.
Later, 36-year-old Karen Ammons, whose husband has been deployed twice through the National Guard, said she remains undecided on who to vote for, even after talking to Edwards.
She agreed with some of the issues presented on military benefits but said she fully supports the way President Bush has handled the war on terror, including the war in Iraq. Her husband returned from Iraq in December, she said.
"I think what she had to say, if it does come about, will be very good for us," Ammons said. "I want to hear more about it."
Edwards said Tuesday she was eager to get back to her Washington home to her 4-year-old son, Jack, and 6-year-old daughter, Emma Claire, who starts the first grade after Labor Day.
Of the many hats she is wearing as mother and a candidate's wife, campaigning "is actually the easy part," she said.
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