WASHINGTON – Everyone always expected the spouse of a Democratic presidential candidate to steal the spotlight. No one thought it would be Elizabeth Edwards. From a recent challenge to conservative pundit Ann Coulter to criticism of Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards’ wife has embraced the role of her husband’s defender while showing a willingness to utter complaints others are reluctant to say.

Clinton owes a good portion of her lead in national polls to the support of women. The Associated Press-Ipsos surveys in June and July show that 63 percent of Clinton’s supporters are women. She gets 41 percent of the vote of female Democrats, while John Edwards got just 10 percent.

No wonder the Edwards campaign has dispatched his spouse to try to chip away at Clinton’s advantage.

“I’m for the promotion of all women,” she told an audience in New Hampshire last week, according to The Union Leader newspaper. “I’m not just for the promotion of one of us.”

Taking on Elizabeth Edwards can be difficult as she has become such a sympathetic figure in her fight against incurable cancer.

She was first diagnosed in the final days of the 2004 campaign, when her husband was the vice presidential nominee, but battled the disease with chemotherapy and surgery. Doctors discovered that the cancer had returned in March, but the Edwardses announced that the campaign would continue.

“Elizabeth Edwards definitely gets the benefit of the doubt because people know about her for fighting cancer,” said Democratic consultant Jenny Backus. “But if she keeps stepping out there, then the other campaigns will fight back. I don’t think she minds that. She doesn’t shy away from a good fight on the issues.”

Mrs. Edwards is an engaging speaker who can sometimes draw crowds as large as his. She stars in the campaign’s latest television ad, stood in for her husband this week at a Planned Parenthood candidate forum and is responsible for the campaign’s most successful fundraising drives.

Donations poured in after the Edwardses announced her cancer returned, and another $400,000 came in when Mrs. Edwards challenged Coulter live on MSNBC’s “Hardball” to stop making personal attacks on her husband. “Why isn’t John Edwards making this call?” Coulter asked, to which Mrs. Edwards responded that she hadn’t spoken to her husband about it.

This week, Mrs. Edwards told the online magazine Salon that her husband would be a more consistent champion for women if elected president than Clinton, seeking to become the first female president.

“Keeping that door open to women is actually more a policy of John’s than Hillary’s,” she said, suggesting the New York senator may be avoiding women’s issues to “behave as a man.”

When former President Clinton was asked Thursday about Mrs. Edwards’ criticisms, he began by talking about his admiration for the struggle she’s going through and her support for her husband. But he said no one who has run for office in recent history has his wife’s commitment to women, families and children.

“If you look at the record on women’s issues, I defy you to find anybody who has run for office in recent history whose got a longer history of working for women, for families and children, than Hillary does,” Bill Clinton said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

In letting his wife take the lead, John Edwards avoids the pitfalls Republican Rick Lazio encountered in the 2000 Senate race in New York against Hillary Clinton.

Lazio alienated many women voters when he strode across the stage in their first debate and demanded Clinton sign a pledge banning unregulated contributions known as “soft money” from her campaign. Analysts considered the confrontation a turning point in the race, generating sympathy for Clinton while making Lazio look like a menacing bully.

In some ways, the Edwards are running as they Clintons did in 1992; Backus called them “a 21st Century version of you get two for the price of one.”

“She is just as much a part of the campaign as he is,” Backus said.

Besides her criticism of Sen. Clinton’s record on women’s issues, Elizabeth Edwards has also been trying to peel away the woman’s vote with a charm offensive. It’s a tactic that Democratic hopeful Barack Obama is using as well, sending out his accomplished wife to recruit female support by talking about their common struggles.

In the recent AP-Ipsos surveys, Obama got 19 percent support from female Democrats.

Michelle Obama often talks about the struggle to balance motherhood and career with getting in her daily work out.

“We suffer in silence, and it’s almost as if we don’t want to admit that it’s as hard as it is and that if we do, that somehow we’re failing _ when the truth is that we need more help,” she said in an AP interview Wednesday.

These are not the kinds of speeches that Hillary Clinton delivers, and it gives the Edwards and Obama campaigns a chance to connect with women in a way that Clinton cannot when she is the candidate and has other policy issues to address.

“Hillary can’t go before a crowd and just talk about the need for flex time,” said Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter. “She’s got to discuss Iraq, health care, the cost of energy, the direction of this country and less of household issues.”

But Cutter said she’s not convinced that a candidate’s wife alone can draw women who want to support the first woman president.

“At the end of the day, voters vote for the person on the ballot,” Cutter said. “So Hillary’s appeal to the women’s vote might be that much stronger.”

On the Net:

http://www.johnedwards.com

A service of the Associated Press(AP)