Edwards To Exit Presidential Race

Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, CBS News confirms, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters' sympathies but never diverted his campaign.

The two-time White House candidate notified a close circle of senior advisers that he planned to make the announcement at a 1 p.m. EST in New Orleans that had been billed as a speech on poverty, according to two of his advisers. The decision came after Edwards lost the four states to hold nominating contests so far to rivals who stole the spotlight from the beginning - Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

The former North Carolina senator will not immediately endorse either candidate in what is now a two-person race for the Democratic nomination, said one adviser, who spoke on a condition of anonymity in advance of the announcement.

Edwards waged a spirited top-tier campaign against the two better-funded rivals, even as he dealt with the stunning blow of his wife's recurring cancer diagnosis. In a dramatic news conference last March, the couple announced that the breast cancer that she thought she had beaten had returned, but they would continue the campaign.

Their decision sparked a debate about family duty and public service. But Elizabeth Edwards remained a forceful advocate for her husband, and she was often surrounded at campaign events by well-wishers and emotional survivors cheering her on.

Edwards planned to announce his campaign was ending with his wife and three children at his side. Then he planned to work with the Habitat for Humanity housing charity at a New Orleans rebuilding projects, the adviser said.

With that, Edwards' campaign will end the way it began 13 months ago - with the candidate pitching in to rebuild lives in a city still ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Edwards embraced New Orleans and its destroyed neighborhoods as a glaring symbol of what he described as a Washington that did not hear the cries of the downtrodden.

CBS News political consultant Marc Ambinder reports that Edwards spoke to both Clinton and Obama on Tuesday, asking them to commit to making poverty a central issue in their respective campaigns -- a request he will highlight in his speech.

Obama issued a statement praising Edwards, saying he brought up issues that otherwise might have gone ignored.

"John Edwards has spent a lifetime fighting to give voice to the voiceless and hope to the struggling, even when it wasn't popular to do or covered in the news," he said. "At a time when our politics is too focused on who's up and who's down, he made a nation focus again on who matters -- the New Orleans child without a home, the West Virginia miner without a job, the families who live in that other America that is not seen or heard or talked about by our leaders in Washington. John and Elizabeth Edwards have always believed deeply that we can change this -- that two Americans can become one, and that our country can rally around this common purpose. So while his campaign may end today, the cause of their lives endures for all of us who still believe that we can achieve that dream of one America."

Edwards burst out of the starting gate with a flurry of progressive policy ideas - he was the first to offer a plan for universal health care in one of the few western countries without it, the first to call on Congress to pull funding for the Iraq war, and he led the charge that lobbyists have too much power in Washington and need to be reigned in.

The ideas were all bold and new for Edwards personally as well, making him a different candidate from the moderate Southerner who ran in 2004 while still in his first Senate term.

Edwards' rise to prominence in politics came amid just one term representing North Carolina in the Senate after a career as a trial attorney that made him millions. He was on Al Gore's short list for vice president in 2000 after serving just two years in office. He ran for president in 2004, and after he lost to John Kerry, the nominee picked him as a running mate.

Elizabeth Edwards first discovered a lump in her breast in the final days of that losing campaign. Her battle against the disease caused her husband to open up about another tragedy in their lives - the death of their teenage son Wade in a 1996 car accident. The candidate barely spoke of Wade during his 2004 campaign, but he offered his son's death to answer questions about how he could persevere when his wife could die.

Edwards made poverty the signature issue of both his presidential campaigns, and he led a four-day tour to highlight the issue in July. The tour also was an effort to remind voters that a rich man can care about the less fortunate. It came as Edwards was dogged by negative coverage of his personal wealth, including his construction of a 28,000-square-foot house, his work for a hedge fund that advised the superrich and $400 haircuts.

But even through the dark days of summer and as Obama and Clinton collected astonishing amounts of money that dwarfed his fundraising effort, Edwards maintained a loyal following in the first voting state of Iowa that made him a serious contender. He came in second to Obama in Iowa, an impressive feat of relegating Clinton to third place, before coming in third in the following three contests.

The loss in South Carolina was especially hard because it was where he was born and he had won the state in 2004. But Edwards performed well enough to pick up 58 delegates.