John Edwards In El Salvador Building Homes, Fighting Poverty

John Edwards Lies Low, Helps Build Houses


On Thursday, December 17, while his former colleagues negotiated furiously over health care reform, John Edwards was changing the tire on a 2001 Dodge Dakota, about thirty miles outside the capitol of El Salvador.

The former senator and presidential candidate has done his best to drop off the face of the earth since the nastiest allegations of the National Enquirer were vindicated last year and a career built on an image of personal integrity collapsed in the messy cover-up of an extramarital affair.

And the place Edwards has chosen to retreat to is El Salvador, according to the missionary home-builder, Michael Bonderer, who earlier this year talked him into taking a trip down to the country.

“I just tried to get in touch with everyone I could think of,” Bonderer said, and Edwards responded with interest –he’s now been there three times this year. Pictures from his most recent three-day trip, last week, show him in blue jeans passing buckets of mortar to American college students volunteering to build houses with Bonderer’s Christian housing organization, Homes from the Heart.

“He’s had a tough go of it the last couple of years, but he wants to make things better for himself and his family, and I think there’s a quality of Redemption about it and also [a] certain allure to the escape

quality of it,” said David Snell, the president of The Fuller Center for Housing, of which Homes for the Heart is part.

Edwards didn’t respond to a request, through a spokeswoman, to talk about his work building homes there . He has talked about it publicly just once: In a partially successful attempt to change the subject of a Washington Post story that focused on charitable projects he appeared to have abandoned in the United States.

“When he talked about poverty, he meant it. In fact, you know, as we speak, he's working in El Salvador,” his wife, Elizabeth, said on CNN in May, “trying to make certain that people who don't have shelter have that.”

Edwards’ quest for redemption has yet to acquire a public relations aspect. Bonderer contacted POLITICO on his own, he said, hoping to draw attention to his organization’s work.

“I think he’s pretty damn sincere,” Bonderer said. “There’s nothing to lead me to believe he’s phony about any of it.”

Edwards, he said, has met with government officials on his group’s behalf and pointed him towards potential donors as well as volunteering on his projects. He has also met with local Evangelical ministers, trying to encourage, Bonderer said, an American-style culture of volunteerism.

"This mission of service is the cause of my life. It's more important to me than politics, though sometimes it's connected to politics," Edwards told a group of ministers in a video posted online,

echoing the stump speech he delivered thousands of times in Iowa.

And for a figure who has appeared uneasy in his rare public appearances since a painful ABC interview when his affair became public, El Salvador may be one place his past won’t follow him.

“The common folks don’t have a real keen sense of who he is,” said Snell.



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Sources: Politico, Washington Post, Homes From The Heart, Youtube, Google Maps