Mister Edwards' neighborhood

For the presidential campaign of John Edwards, message and method are at crossroads on the street where “two Americas” meet | Jamie Dean

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.— John Edwards is heartbroken. That's what he told the congregation at Riverside Church in Harlem, N.Y., during a recent Sunday morning service: "We have to break the silence about the extraordinarily deep divisions between the haves and the have-nots."

Five hundred miles south, next to a modest auto shop off a short gravel driveway, Monty Johnson says the silence between him and Edwards is deafening. That's ironic because the Democratic presidential candidate lives just across the street.

Johnson, 55, a retired farmer with arthritic knees, has lived in a simple home on Old Greensboro Road in the rolling countryside near Chapel Hill, N.C., all his life. Edwards and his wife Elizabeth bought 102 acres across the street in 2005, and last summer moved into their custom-built 28,000-square-foot estate, valued at $6 million.