Edwards admits child of ex-mistress is his

combined dispatches

ATLANTA — Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards admitted Thursday that he fathered an out-of-wedlock child with a former campaign videographer, confirming rumors and reports that had been swirling around the former North Carolina senator for months.

“I am Quinn’s father,” Edwards said in a prepared statement, referring to Frances Quinn Hunter, the toddler he fathered with the videographer, Rielle Hunter. “It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter, and hopefully one day, when she understands, she will forgive me.”

Edwards, 56, has been married for more than three decades to Elizabeth Edwards, 60, an attorney who played a high-profile role in his political campaigns and who has been diagnosed with cancer.

The couple had four children together, the eldest of whom, Wade, died in a car accident in 1996. The couple’s two youngest children are not yet high school age.

Edwards admitted the affair with Hunter, 45, in August 2008, after the National Enquirer reported that he was the child’s father. At the time, Edwards vigorously denied the allegation. The baby was born in February 2008, and Edwards said the affair took place “for a short period” in 2006.

In his statement Thursday, Edwards said he had been providing financial support for the child and had reached an agreement with Hunter to continue doing so.

“To all those I have disappointed and hurt, these words will never be enough, but I am truly sorry,” he said.

The slow-unfolding sex scandal has most likely ended the political career of what was once one of America’s most-prominent public figures and one of its most- outspoken advocates for the poor. But thus far, it has had few broader political repercussions.

The Enquirer reported that Edwards was having an affair while he was still vying for the Democratic presidential nomination. When Edwards dropped out of the race in January 2008, much of the analysis focused on his failure to gain ground against the front- runners, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

The executive editor of the Enquirer says he plans to enter his paper’s work on the John Edwards scandal for a Pulitzer Prize.

“It’s clear we should be a contender for this,” Barry Levine said Thursday, hours after Edwards admitted what the newspaper had been reporting all along: that he is the father of Hunter’s baby.

Although the staff never doubted its reports that Edwards had fathered a baby girl with his former campaign videographer, Levine said, “there is vindication, finally. Mr. Edwards kept the story alive much longer than it needed to be kept alive with his denials. He has only himself to blame.”

Although the Enquirer stories may or may not be prize-winning material — the tabloid’s most significant disclosures came in 2007 and 2008, and this year’s Pulitzers will honor material published in 2009 — there is no question that the paper scooped the rest of the media world.

Since admitting the affair, Edwards has kept a relatively low profile. He reportedly has traveled to Central America to build houses for the poor and has been seen in and around Chapel Hill, N.C., where the family built a large estate just outside town.

This week, NBC News reported that Edwards and his wife had separated. On Thursday, a representative from the Raleigh, N.C.-based PR company representing him, Fitzpatrick Communications, declined to discuss that report or any other aspect of the story.