Scandal tough on Edwards aide

Is Young fall guy or a key player?

During John Edwards' two campaigns for president, Andrew Aldridge Young was a trusted, loyal aide, often near the candidate's side when he was in North Carolina.

When Edwards and his family were out of town, Young looked after their houses. When they flew into town, Young picked them up at the airport. If Edwards' parents needed help at a campaign event, Young was there. When hordes of reporters and photographers trampled the grass of Edwards' Raleigh neighbors during his 2003 presidential announcement, Young arranged to have the damage repaired.

And when Rielle Hunter -- the campaign videographer with whom Edwards has acknowledged he had an affair -- became pregnant, Young said the baby was his.

That statement, posted in December by a Washington lawyer representing Young, transformed and complicated the life of a 42-year-old man who finished law school at Wake Forest but apparently has never practiced law. He has lived in the Governors Club near Chapel Hill with his wife and three children, and more recently in a Santa Barbara, Calif., home worth nearly $2 million. Both homes are in gated communities that offer some shielding from public view.

It is not clear whether he is working. But records show that work is wrapping up on Young's new home: a 5,300-square-foot structure on a wooded, 10-acre lot outside Chapel Hill.

The circumstances have raised questions about Edwards' longtime aide, most sounding more like the stuff of soap operas than the residue of a failed campaign:

Was Young really the father of Hunter's newborn daughter? How did a man who collected a middle-class income raising money and serving as a personal assistant wind up doing so well for himself? Why did Edwards' campaign finance chairman pay to move Young and Hunter from North Carolina to palatial homes in California, away from prying tabloid reporters?

Last month, Edwards acknowledged that he had an extramarital affair with Hunter but denied that he was the father of her baby girl, born in February. He said he was willing to take a paternity test; Hunter has since refused to allow her daughter to be tested. Edwards also denied having any previous knowledge of payments made to Hunter and Young.

But news stories and blog postings since then have fueled skepticism about those assertions -- and about Young's role.

Pigeon O'Brien, a Texas-based publicist who said she was a longtime friend of Hunter before losing touch with her in June, said that although she remembers Hunter's talking about her boyfriend "John" from North Carolina, she could not remember Hunter's ever mentioning Andrew Young.

When the National Enquirer's pursuit of the Edwards affair story heated up last year, the Youngs and Hunter fell under the protection of Fred Baron, finance chairman for the Edwards campaign. An influential fundraiser for the Democratic Party, the former Dallas trial lawyer acknowledged last month that he paid to move Young and Hunter from North Carolina to California.

At one point after the move, according to Baron, Young's family was sharing a home with Hunter, at least until tensions arose.

Young's new home outside Chapel Hill is secluded. There he and his family may be able to dodge the persistent questions surrounding Edwards' relationship with Hunter, the woman hired to shoot a series of videos leading up to his run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Young and his family aren't talking to the press. But in a mid-August interview with the New York Post, Young's mother, Jacquelyn Juchatz, expressed doubts that her son was the father. No father was listed on the baby's birth certificate.