Rielle Hunter rules out paternity test

It is beginning to look like the blank space on the birth certificate where the father's name is supposed to go might never be filled in, as speculation over the paternity of Rielle Hunter's baby continued Saturday.

Hunter issued a statement through her attorney saying she would not submit her daughter a genetic test to determine the father of the girl born to her in February.

That came a day after former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards admitted to ABC News that he had had an affair with Hunter. But he vehemently denied that he got her pregnant, and he said he is willing to take a paternity test to prove it. He said their affair ended in 2006, before she would have become pregnant.

Efforts to reach Edwards on Saturday were unsuccessful.

Hunter and a former Edwards campaign aide, Andrew Aldridge Young, posted statements online in December saying that Young was the baby's father.

But on Saturday, ABC News reported that Hunter's sister, identified only as Melissa, challenged Edwards to take a DNA test, saying, "Somebody must stand up for my sister."

Then Robert Gordon, a New York lawyer, issued a statement to The Washington Post that Hunter would not be tested.

"She wishes to maintain her privacy and her daughter's privacy," Gordon said. "Furthermore, Rielle will not participate in DNA testing or any other invasion of her or her daughter's privacy now or in the future."

Reached by phone, Gordon told The News & Observer that he and Hunter will have nothing else to say.

By implication, that could leave Hunter's earlier statement naming Young as the father as the final word on the matter.

Young was a devoted foot soldier in John Edwards' political career. But whether he was dedicated enough to falsely claim Rielle Hunter's baby was his or he simply had an affair with the same woman as his boss is a matter of much speculation.

Young, 42, and his family have been in hiding, just like Hunter, since The National Enquirer began reporting on the affair late last year.

Young's career

Young is a North Carolina native who went to work for Edwards' campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1998, working as a low-level staffer. The following year, he married a nurse, Cheri Lynn Pfister, who was 25 at the time, and the couple settled in Cary. They began to raise a family that would grow to three children.

Young followed Edwards to the Senate, working on his staff there. In July 2000, the Youngs bought into a 4,850-square-foot house in Raleigh.

By the spring of 2002, Young split his time between Edwards' Senate office and his political action committee, the New American Optimists, which The N&O noted at the time was a sign of Edwards' escalating political ambition. That same spring, Young was looking for an office in Raleigh that would house Edwards' re-election campaign and the Washington-based PAC, which was financing his presidential exploratory efforts.

Young moved up the ranks, at least in title, in January 2003, when Edwards announced the formation of Edwards for President, Inc., an exploratory committee. Young was director of operations.

Edwards' expected entry into the campaign brought national media to Raleigh. TV trucks crowded the streets near his home and damaged neighbors' lawns.

Edwards sent a note to his neighbors telling them to get in touch with "our assistant" -- Young -- who would arrange for Edwards' lawn care service to repair the damage.

By 2006, Young was engrossed in Edwards' increasingly certain presidential bid. It was that July when Hunter began her six-month contract to produce a series of videos for the One America Committee's Web site to personalize Edwards, who had been criticized as being too wooden during his Senate campaign.