N.C.Bankers miss senator's attention

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Posted on Sun, Aug. 17, 2003

N.C. bankers miss senator's attention
Early on, Edwards earned their confidence; then he moved on
TIM FUNK
Observer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - If the votes of N.C. bankers had been the only ones counted in the 1998 Senate race, John Edwards would have lost badly to GOP Sen. Lauch Faircloth.

"I don't think anybody in banking was for Edwards," says Democrat John Forlines, chairman and CEO of the Bank of Granite in Granite Falls. "Lauch was a conservative, as most bankers are."

He was also a member of the Senate Banking Committee, no small thing in a state that's home to two of the country's five biggest banks. With Edwards' win, it looked as if North Carolina had lost that seat.

But the senator-elect quickly reached out to the bankers. He invited Kathryn Marks of the American Bankers Association to join his Washington staff; she's now his legislative director. Edwards also began pursuing an appointment to the Banking Committee.

Bankers in Charlotte and Raleigh lit up the phones. Forlines, considered the dean of N.C. banking, put in a plug for Edwards with Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Don Ogilvie, president of the American Bankers Association.

Edwards got the seat.

"He was eager to learn and was talking with bankers to better understand the issues," says Thad Woodard, president and CEO of the N.C. Bankers Association.

Edwards didn't always agree with his new friends. He wanted to do more to protect bank customers' privacy, for example. But the bankers' investment in Edwards paid off in October 1999 when he helped craft a bipartisan compromise on the so-called Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

Bankers had tried for 20 years to get Congress to pass

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/special_packages/john_edwards/