Edwards Camp's Statement on SEIU Email

Edwards Spokesman Eric Schultz: “John Edwards is the only candidate in this campaign who has never accepted one dime from any Washington lobbyist or PAC and has been unequivocal in publicly denouncing 527 groups and the corrupting influence of money in politics. He has repeatedly called on such groups to stop their spending.

The email put forth by a rival campaign is an internal SEIU email about internal SEIU discussions and has nothing to do with the Edwards campaign. Apparently, based on the email we received from a reporter, SEIU officials were having two separate conversations – one with the Edwards campaign to discuss perfectly legal member-to-member activities and another one internally about their own activities – to try and link the two conversations together is false and misleading.

As soon as SEIU officials informed us, later on, that some of their staff would no longer able to communicate with us about the campaign, we immediately stopped all conversation with them, as we legally had to. We found out about the existence of this outside group the same way the public did and we stand by our strong position that 527's should have no role in the political process.”