GOP's Graham fights the Edwards comparison

Both fan and foe have described Bill Graham as a Republican version of John Edwards.

Like Edwards, Graham grew up in a middle-class family with a father who worked in a textile mill. Graham also launched a legal career that made him a millionaire, aimed high in his first run for public office and bankrolled much of the campaign.

The other, and unfortunate, parallel for Graham, 47, is that his trailing run for governor more closely resembles Edwards' unsuccessful campaigns for the White House in 2004 and 2008 than Edwards' victory in the 1998 Senate race.

"The only similarity between Edwards and me," Graham said, "is we part our hair about the same way."

Actually, they part it on different sides, but Graham cautioned that he never paid $400 for a haircut, as Edwards did.

Thank the Watergate scandal for Graham's interest in politics. In 1974, the summer between seventh and eighth grade, the television networks were broadcasting the Watergate hearings, presided over in the Senate by Sen. Sam Ervin of North Carolina.

"I vividly remember watching Sam Ervin interrogate all those guys," Graham said, listing White House aides indicted in the scandal that brought down President Nixon.

Graham saw the broadcasts when he came home from mowing lawns, one of his part-time jobs growing up in Dunn, about 40 miles south of Raleigh on Interstate 95.

John and Rebecca Graham provided the necessities for their children, but the youngsters paid for anything else: gas for the car, racket and shoes for the school tennis team, a trip to the Philmont Boy Scout ranch in New Mexico. Bill Graham made Eagle Scout.

"I didn't go hungry," Graham said, "but if you wanted something, you had to pay for it."

Now he has a reputation for ensuring that others don't have to pay.

Friends routinely mention the money he has given to worthy causes. After Hurricane Katrina, he telephoned the local Lowe's store and asked it to truck every generator it could find to the Gulf coast.

The problem: Raleigh

Childhood friend Billy Godwin, now a Dunn lawyer, remembers that while most teenagers were having fun on weekends, Graham was busing tables and running the dishwasher at Heath's Steakhouse.

Both Graham and Godwin were in their high school's first advanced placement American history course.

"It became apparent that he had a knack for the political process," Godwin recalled. "He was able to absorb the dynamics of politics. You could tell from his discussions with the teacher and classmates."

Graham looks younger than someone nearing 50, without a gray hair in sight. His manner and remarks seem invincibly calm and upbeat, but he can meander from one topic to the next, sometimes making it difficult to discern his message.

He insists that he doesn't have just one priority as governor. He'll tackle the dropout rate, traffic congestion, health care and immigration.

"I'm a good multitasker," he said during an interview last week.

He's running as the outsider candidate, a businessman who's not steeped in the trappings of government. All of his major opponents have served years in Raleigh or, in Pat McCrory's case, as the mayor of Charlotte.

"Raleigh is the problem," Graham said at an East Carolina University debate. "We're going to have to change the personnel at the top. That's going to be job number one."

No Rush Limbaugh

Graham spent his senior year in high school in Ireland after his father, a chemist for Burlington Industries, was transferred.

He picked Catawba College, his dad's alma mater. Early on, Graham aimed for a legal career, said Sandy Silverburg, a Catawba political science professor and a former Graham adviser. Silverburg also taught one of Graham's opponents for the Republican nomination, McCrory, and ranks both among his favorite students.