Edwards Followed By Giant Sweet Potato

From CBS News' Aaron Lewis:

BARNWELL, S.C. -- John Edwards may or may not have a stalker. Fortunately for the former North Carolina senator, she’s easy to spot. After all, she carries with her an abnormally large vegetable.

Confused? Let me explain…

I first saw her two days ago at a Charleston, S.C. food bank lugging around a gargantuan 17-pound sweet potato. At the time, I figured she was just a local farmer who was simply proud of a prize-winning crop and wanted to show it off to the world.

Then she popped up again yesterday. This time, it was at a town hall meeting in Summerville, S.C., leading off the Q and A session with a question about the environment. And she had the same damn sweet potato in hand. I referred to her in my notes as “Sweet Potato Lady.”

And then as the Q and A at today’s town hall meeting in Barnwell was wrapping up, Edwards randomly called on the same familiar face. Yes, it was Sweet Potato Lady again…

“Senator, I saw you yesterday…” she began.

“Oh I knew I recognized you!” cut in Edwards, genuinely surprised. “You should go carry that sweet potato around!”

Well, of course, Sweet Potato Lady did have the mutant starch by her side. She never actually posed a question. Rather, she talked about the environment in a long monologue that was inaudible from where I was standing inside the room.

The curiosity got the best of me. Who is Sweet Potato Lady? And why is she following John Edwards all across South Carolina with a disturbingly large potato? This required some investigative journalism.

Meet Dr. Janice Ryan-Bohac. She’s a professional plant breeder for Carolina Advanced Renewable Energy (CARE). And there’s actually a method to her madness.

“I want the senator to know that we have crops for the South that will work for biofuels,” said Dr. Ryan-Bohac. “I know that that’s part of his platform, that he’s interested in creating jobs here in the South.”

Proponents of biofuels are hardly uncommon on the campaign trail. After all, politicos working in Iowa leading up to the caucuses became mild experts on the wonders of corn-based ethanol as alternative fuel. But sweet potatoes in our SUVs and lawn mowers? That’s just nutty.

Actually, argued Dr. Ryan-Bohac, “(with) corn you get about 300 gallons of ethanol per acre. This type sweet potato, you can get about 1,900 gallons per acre. It uses a whole lot less nitrogen. It uses a whole lot less water. It grows on soils like tobacco land like we have here which is low in organic matter.”

Translation: if Edwards wants to build jobs in a “green economy,” the South is sufficiently suited to meet those demands.

“We can be participating in the ‘Rural Renaissance,’” said the doctor, “which means being able to grow our own fuels and creating the jobs in places like this in South Carolina.”

Dr. Ryan-Bohac said John Edwards appealed to her after reading his web site when it was clear that her first choice Al Gore would not be running. She said she was turned off by Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s willingness to build more nuclear power plants and is drawn toward Edwards’s position on developing renewable fuels.

And for those who are skeptical about Dr. Ryan-Bohac’s propensity for getting face time with Edwards at three consecutive events, she made it clear that unlike the elements she breeds, she is not a plant (ZING! that’s right; I get paid to write this stuff).

“It’s Sammy,” she said. “Everybody likes Sammy. He’s so ugly.”

Sammy, of course, is the potato. That’s right. She named her sweet potato Sammy.

And with two more days left in the Palmetto State, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sammy once again.