"Mr. Edwards goes to Bilderberg"

7 July 2004, Jodi Wilgoren, New York Times

There were 25 serious contenders, each with dossiers of up to 30 pages - single spaced - for Senator John Kerry to review, a grab bag of names from the spheres of politics, business and nonprofit groups. As late as Thursday, he was musing about people who had not been in play for a month, still open to some new idea of whom he should pick.

And Monday night, summoned to a 10:30 p.m. supper of fish soup and salad at the Pennsylvania farm owned by Mr. Kerry's wife, his campaign manager and the head of his super-secret search for a running mate turned to each other and realized they did not yet know whose name it would be.

"I said, 'Do you think we're going to be surprised?' and she said, 'We might be,' " recalled James A. Johnson, the banker and Democratic stalwart who led the effort, referring to the manager, Mary Beth Cahill. "We never got to a short list. He always wanted to have multiple possible choices. In his mind it wasn't a question of narrowing and narrowing. In his mind it was fully evaluating a lot of different alternatives."

As details began to emerge about Mr. Kerry's four-month quest for a running mate, it was tempting to seize on an individual moment that proved decisive.

Had Mr. Edwards been so impressive in their clandestine meeting near midnight Thursday at the Georgetown home of their mutual neighbor, former Secretary of State Madeleine K.. Albright? Did the glowing reports from Mr. Kerry's friends and colleagues about Mr. Edwards's performance last month in Italy at an exclusive gathering of powerful figures in business and politics put him over the top? Or did Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, as he prayed and played softball by Mr. Kerry's side on Sunday, do something to knock himself out of the picture?

But those closest to Mr. Kerry and to several of the candidates said there was no such drama in a search process that was deliberative, dutiful and, above all, discreet.

"I can't say there was a pivotal moment," said Cameron Kerry, Mr. Kerry's brother, and one of his closest confidantes, who spent Thursday in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Edwards's hometown, hearing plaudits for the man who would be picked. "I think it was a process. It was organic."

That process began late on March 2, when Mr. Kerry, amid the euphoria of his Super Tuesday primary victories - and the news that Mr. Edwards had dropped out of the Democratic race - called the Washington home of Mr. Johnson, a banker whose campaign credits include the chairmanship of Walter F. Mondale's White House bid in 1984. He was already asleep, but answered the message in the morning - and flew to Florida to meet up with Mr. Kerry and get his marching orders.

Mr. Johnson spent the two-hour flight from Orlando to Boston huddled with Mr. Kerry and then continued their conversation at his Beacon Hill townhouse. Mr. Johnson said Mr. Kerry spun fully formed paragraphs without notes of his five detailed criteria - the person must be qualified to step into the Oval Office, someone who has convictions and has acted on them, and on and on. Mr. Johnson said he asked about rivals who should be crossed off because of, politely, lack of chemistry, and was told, "that was then, this is now - there is no one who should come off your list because of any compatibility issues of any kind."

"We talked about Republicans, we talked about businessmen, we talked about academics, we talked about people in the nonprofit sector," Mr. Johnson recalled. "It was very broad from the beginning."

Mr. Johnson and more than 100 helpers, most lawyers, began scrubbing extensive public records on at least two dozen candidates, sending accordion-files full of summaries, often accompanied by videotapes of speeches, debates or campaign commercials, over for Mr. Kerry.

Ms. Cahill and Mr. Johnson met with Mr. Kerry every 10 days or so all spring, speaking about the search near-daily by telephone; in between, Mr. Kerry had more than a dozen private one-on-ones with potential partners. And he consulted quietly, usually in his Capitol hideaway office, an adviser said, with colleagues in Congress and party elders like George Mitchell, Vernon Jordan, Bob Kerrey and John Glenn.

As scrutiny intensified in recent weeks, with reporters staking out his homes and offices, Mr. Kerry went to great lengths to conceal his calendar. Once, Mr. Johnson and his team of lawyers escaped a meeting in the Russell Senate Office Building unnoticed by exiting via the balcony and then through Senator Edward M. Kennedy's office down the hall. On June 23, Mr. Vilsack snuck out of state during a high-profile jobs tour, summoned to San Jose, Calif., for a two-hour dinner at Mr. Kerry's hotel; ferried by private jet and accompanied by a lone state trooper, he left Iowa after 5 p.m. and returned the next morning by 10.

"He maybe got a day's notice," said Mr. Vilsack's communications director, Matt Paul. "Until this morning when I met with the governor, I didn't know about the San Jose trip."

Mr. Edwards, of course, had been at the top of the list from Day 1, with a growing roster of Democrats talking up his credentials to Mr. Kerry at every turn. Former Senator Gary Hart caught a few minutes alone with Mr. Kerry before a Denver fund-raiser on June 21 and said, "The only name that came up was Edwards.' " Andrew Stern, the president of the Service Employees' International Union, met with Mr. Kerry two days later in San Francisco and said, "I only have two words I want to say to you: John Edwards."

But last Monday, riding between events in Baltimore, Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said Mr. Kerry sounded anything but sure.

"I left there feeling that it was quite possible - possible not probable - that he would pick someone else," said Mr. Cummings, an Edwards booster. "It's almost like everybody likes this guy you say you're going to marry, all your in-laws like him, but do you like him?"

Several people pointed to the secretive and exclusive Bilderberg conference of some 120 people that this year drew the likes of Henry A. Kissinger, Melinda Gates and Richard A. Perle to Stresa, Italy, in early June, as helping win Mr. Kerry's heart. Mr. Edwards spoke so well in a debate on American politics with the Republican Ralph Reed that participants broke Bilderberg rules to clap before the end of the session. Beforehand, Mr. Edwards traveled to Brussels to meet with NATO officials, brandishing his foreign-policy credentials.

"His performance at Bilderberg was important," said a friend of Mr. Kerry who was there. "He reported back directly to Kerry. There were other reports on his performance. Whether they reported directly or indirectly, I have no doubt the word got back to Mr. Kerry about how well he did."

On Thursday afternoon, via conference call, Mr. Johnson and Ms. Cahill met with Mr. Kerry on the selection for the final time, having answered all of his questions and handed over the last of hundreds of pages of documents. That night, around 11 p.m., Mr. Kerry crept out of his Georgetown home, on O Street, as Mr. Edwards tiptoed from his, a block away on P Street, and the two met at Ms. Albright's place around the corner on 34th Street - she was not home.

It would be four more days before Mr. Edwards's phone in Georgetown would ring, Tuesday morning at 7:30, with the job offer. After a 15-minute chat, Mr. Kerry called several of the also-rans - Mr. Vilsack, Senator Bob Graham of Florida and Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri all said they heard from him around 8 - while Mr. Edwards dialed his wife, Elizabeth, who was in the shower in their home in Raleigh.

"When I did get on the phone, John had Emma Claire on the phone first," Mrs. Edwards said of their 6-year-old daughter. "She said, 'Senator Kerry picked Daddy.' ''