All The Candidates’ Kids: Cate Edwards

As the race for the White House continues to heat up, Access Hollywood continues our “All The Candidates’ Kids” series, as Maria Menounos sits down with the savvy and articulate Cate Edwards – daughter of Democratic hopeful John Edwards.

So what’s it like growing up with a dad who has Capitol Hill aspirations?

“He’s kind of a dork. We’re kind of a dorky family,” Cate laughed. “I think we embrace it. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Candid terms of endearment from a daughter to her father! And as Maria spent the day with the 25-year-old Cate in South Carolina, she found a young woman hitting the campaign trail hard, trying to get her father through to the White House.

“I’m just here on behalf of my dad to say that he is fighting with you,” Cate told Maria.

And her dad couldn’t be happier than to have his daughter by side.

“Nobody better understands me, because she’s seen me in all the good and the bad time,” the former Senator beamed. “I’m just proud of her. I don’t know any other way to say it.”

But for Cate, John Edwards isn’t a presidential hopeful – he’s just her dad.

“Tell me a little of what we don’t know about your dad. Not John Edwards – dad,” Maria asked her.

“That’s how I think of John Edwards anyway,” Cate explained. “He’s a really laid back guy. He coached my basketball team and my softball team and every Sunday morning, he would make us pancakes in little animal shapes.”

Cate, a second-year Harvard law student, isn’t afraid to convict her dad on one count of parental embarrassment.

“My older brother and I always used to make fun of his dancing. He’s not a good dancer,” Cate revealed. “He used to at least try, but I think we’ve broken him of his will to dance, which is good.”

Memories of Cate’s older brother, Wade, are held close to her heart. Tragedy struck the Edwards family in 1996, when a then-16-year-old Wade was killed in a car accident.

John Edwards told Maria he credits Cate for being the family’s rock throughout their unimaginable heartbreak.

“Cate, in many ways, propped the both of us up, because we were going through so much pain, even though she was going through great pain too,” he told Maria. “And I really think that began her growing up more quickly than a lot of young people do.”

“How do you guys keep his memory alive as a family,” Maria asked of Wade.

“He lives in each of us. He inspires us the way that he lived his life. He inspires us everyday to be better people,” Cate explained.

But the death of Wade wouldn’t be the only tragedy to test her inner strength. Last March, Cate’s mother, Elizabeth, announced that after more than two years of remission, her breast cancer had spread to her bones.

It’s a condition that is treatable – but not curable.

“How did you now cope with your mother’s cancer coming back in an incurable form?” Maria asked Cate.

“Well, I think that what we’ve always done as a family is sort of hang on to each other a little tighter. That’s what happened when Wade died and that’s what happened when my mom’s cancer came back. My parents and I are very close. And we, you know, we really have to be holding on to each other in order to swim during these times,” she said.

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