WASHINGTON – Democratic White House hopeful John Edwards insists on first-class pampering – enjoying $400 haircuts on the road and plunking down nearly $500 for swank spa treatments, according to campaign records.
Edwards, who touts himself as the poor man’s champion and even launched his bid from New Orleans’ hurricane-devastated Lower Ninth Ward, tucked the vanity treatments into his 5,236-page first-quarter Federal Election Commission filing under “consulting” expenses.
Records show he doled out $400 of his contributors’ money to Beverly Hills mane maestros at Torrenueva Hair Designs in February and another $400 to Torrenueva in early March.
Joe Torrenueva is a stylist to the stars at his Wilshire Boulevard salon, and has sculpted the scalps of actors in films such as “Cadence,” “Stand-Ins” and the Charles Bronson classic “Hard Times.”
Further fueling his critics who have painted him as a pretty boy and “Breck Girl,” Edwards also had his skin smoothed from stylists from the Pink Sapphire salon in Manchester, N.H., for $225.
Pink Sapphire, which is geared toward women, bills itself as a “unique boutique for the mind, body and face,” and its mission statement is to “provide an avenue into the intriguing world of makeup.”
In March, Edwards also spent $250 of his donors’ money for the talented technicians at the Designworks Salon in Dubuque, Iowa – where a full-day spa package runs $210 – to clip his coif and slap on some makeup in advance of a TV session.
“We went to him,” said a Designworks stylist who identified herself only as Melissa, indicating beauticians and hairstylists travel to Edwards’ location to pretty him up for TV spots and campaign events.
Edwards spokesman Eric Schultz did not respond to requests for comment.
Pampering fit for a president is nothing new. Former President Bill Clinton got his locks lopped off by celebrity hairstylist Christophe.
Last summer, The Post broke the story that now-Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ponied up nearly $3,000 in campaign cash for her blond tresses to get some presidential pampering from acclaimed D.C. stylist Isabelle Goetz.
Goetz was also John Kerry’s hairstylist of choice in the buildup to his failed 2004 White House bid.
Edwards’ follicle flap is the latest uproar in his “two Americas” – the one he talks about on the campaign trail and the one in which he lives.
Edwards is taking heat for playing to the poor while putting the finishing touches on a $5.3 million compound tucked into 102 wooded acres outside Chapel Hill, N.C.