'Hometown' Paper Cited by Cheney is a Small One in Southern Pines

By: Erin Olson In last night's debate, Vice President Dick Cheney seemingly scored points when he referred to a nickname for his opponent coined by what he called Sen. John Edwards' "hometown newspaper." The paper, he said, had called Edwards "Senator Gone," a barb aimed at the senator's absence from a number of Senate floor votes.

Cheney did not cite the paper by name, and most probably assumed that it was The News & Observer, the major daily in Raleigh, N.C., where Edwards has lived for several decades. The News & Observer, however, quickly searched its archives and found no record of that putdown in its pages.

As it turns out, Cheney's quote source is a small paper published three times a week in North Carolina's Moore County, called The Pilot.

"I thought it was great," Steve Bouser, editor of the Pilot, told E&P with a laugh. "How many little three-times-a-week papers get mentioned in a national debate?"

Edwards, he said, grew up in a small town in North Carolina called Robbins, which is located in the northern part of Moore County. He moved to Raleigh as an adult. Edwards was actually born in Seneca, S.C. Which area counts as his "hometown" may be subject to, well, debate.

Bouser admitted that when he heard Cheney's comment, he did not realize at first that the vice president was referring to the Pilot. "I thought maybe the Republicans, knowing that Edwards had moved to Washington from Raleigh, maybe thought that was his hometown," he said. Bouser assumed (along with many others, presumably) that Cheney had seen the editorial in The News & Observer.

Bouser said the Pilot had not received many phone calls yet about the editorial, which ran back in June 2003 and is re-posted on its Web site today. "I was a little bit surprised that we haven't had a lot of calls, but he [Cheney] didn't list the paper by name," Bouser said.

The June 25, 2003, editorial also included the following: "Members of the senator's staff point out that Edwards' attendance record this year has been better than the other three Democratic senators who are campaigning for president -- Joe Lieberman, Richard Gephardt and Bob Graham. And the aides also say none of the votes Edwards missed was close, so his presence on the floor would not have changed the outcome."