Veteran Campaign Spouse Displays Her Skills on the Trail While Talking Politics, Not Cancer

May 4, 2007 — -- Elizabeth Edwards' cancer may be the first thing that people think about when they see her on the campaign trail. But while that may be topic A on many minds in the audience, the veteran political spouse didn't even mention cancer while campaigning in New Hampshire this week.

Instead she talked about her husband's stands on political issues and why voters should support her husband's run for president.

Edwards has a busy summer of campaign stops planned. She admits she's not spending the summer hanging out on the beach and she jokes with the crowd that she's not entering bikini contests either. Instead Elizabeth Edwards is focusing her considerable campaigning skills on the contest to win the Democratic nomination.

During a full day of campaigning in this key primary state, Edwards never mentioned her stage-four cancer. While mingling in the crowd, audience members occasionally mentioned her health. She thanked them for their concern, assured them she felt fine and quickly shifted gears to focus on subjects like John Edwards' stance on Iraq, energy, education and poverty.

While watching her handle the crowds and media in New Hampshire, it is easy to see that she is experienced in the role of candidate's wife.

A wife you'd soon forget just seven weeks ago professed to the world her cancer had returned.

Edwards has done this before, and it shows. Other than former President Clinton, she is the only political spouse this year who has experience with campaigning on a national ticket.

She has certainly learned that political staging can be as important as the political message.

At a campaign stop at a law firm office this week, Edwards beelined for the back of a conference room where the only five "John Edwards" signs were hung. "I've been in politics long enough to know, you find the signs and you go stand in front of them," Elizabeth jokingly commented while at a midafternoon campaign stop at Rath, Young & Pignatelli law firm in Concord. While being introduced, a sign slipped and she dutifully reposted it on the wall, smiling as newspaper photographers took her picture.

At a morning event in Manchester, she was hooked up with a cordless microphone, affixed to her green suit blazer for ease of talking without holding a microphone. But still she took the regular handheld microphone in addition and asked rhetorically in front of the cameras, "Am I just holding this as a prop?" She knew the answer to her own question; just like she knew to give a shout out to the most important primary states -- New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada -- mentioning them all by name just a few minutes into her first speech.

In addition to knowing how to finesse the staging part of campaigning, she also knew the basics. She glad-handed until there was no one left in the room, she never broke her smile, and she made sure to repeatedly thank her campaign partner that day, abortion rights activist Kate Michelman, a key Democratic ally who recently came onboard the Edwards' campaign as a senior adviser.