Challenging Bush: A Journey From a Mill Town Ends With a Run for President By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr., NYTimes

Senator Edwards’s campaign for president, which won the coveted endorsement of The Des Moines Register yesterday, hinges on the notion that he has not forgotten where he comes from. He usually arrives at his events to the blaring sound of John Cougar Mellencamp singing “I was born in a small town.” And it never takes him long to tell his audience he was reared by working-class parents in mill towns of the Carolinas and was the first in his family to go to college.