Edwards' nonprofit kept his profile high

updated 12:12 p.m. ET June 22, 2007

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - When John Edwards pursued his crusade against poverty in 2005, he created a nonprofit center that allowed him to maintain a high profile, and avoid the legal scrutiny aimed at presidential candidates.

Not that Edwards was running for the White House at that point. Fresh from his loss as Democratic nominee John Kerry's running mate in 2004, he would not declare himself a candidate for president until late in 2006.

However, the nonprofit Center for Promise and Opportunity offered distinct advantages to Edwards, its honorary chairman. The center's five officers all had worked for his previous presidential campaign, for example, and it appears to have paid for his travel to New Hampshire and several delegate-rich states.

The center wasn't subject to the limits imposed by federal election laws on a presidential exploratory committee, the first major step in raising money toward a bid. Meanwhile, it may have stretched the limits of tax law, which prohibits political nonprofits from having a primary purpose of supporting or opposing candidates.

"It's possible that the 'opportunity' the center was promoting was only John Edwards' opportunity _ his opportunity to run for president," said Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group that tracks money in politics.

The Edwards campaign describes his activities back then in a different light.

"Edwards led these efforts to raise awareness about poverty and other obstacles to equal opportunity, explore ideas to meet those challenges and test some of them in the real world," said Eric Schultz, his spokesman. "One of the ways he did that was through the Center for Promise and Opportunity."

With the nonprofit, though, there were no limits on the amount of money Edwards could raise, either from individual donors or overall.

Compared to exploratory committees and political action committees regulated by the Federal Election Commission, the center didn't have to disclose nearly as much information about how it was spending the money or where it came from. It has been able to keep that limited amount of information under wraps for much longer.

PACs must update the FEC on their finances every quarter, and an exploratory committee must document its fundraising and spending with federal regulators not long after a potential candidate formally enters the race. Edwards' nonprofit filed its 2005 annual report with the Internal Revenue Service in November 2006 and has yet to file its 2006 report, having asked for an extension beyond the May deadline.

The campaign declined to release the figures that will be in the 2006 report to The Associated Press.

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