Delegates With a Broken Pledge

John Edwards, with wife Elizabeth in January, admitted to an affair with another woman. (By Paul Sancya -- Associated Press)

"I will say, it was a major political decision for me. It was a very important one. One of the most important I made in my political career," she said.

When the campaign ended badly, she says, she called Edwards to buck him up. She reminded him of the post-campaign accomplishments of Al Gore, and told Edwards he should consider carrying the message of economic inequity and injustice around the globe.

"For the millions of women who remain marginalized by economic forces, who have not been advantaged by the progress of the women's movement, for those women, I felt John Edwards represented the greatest hope for their lives and their families' lives," Michelman said. "That is what is just so devastating about this."

Speaking publicly about her feelings for the first time, Michelman said she feels a sense of solidarity with the delegates at the convention, the donors who sent money and the volunteers who toiled on Edwards's behalf.

"The reality of the betrayal, the sadness -- it all etches so sharply," she said.

Not everyone among the delegates, though, is overcome with such raw emotion. Robert Groce, 40, of Summerville, S.C., said he still supports Edwards -- proudly and defiantly -- even though he understands his candidate's political career is almost certainly finished.

Groce fled New Orleans when Katrina's floods hit and he was forced to move away. He had landed in Summerville when he saw Edwards launch his campaign from New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward.

"That touched me very much," Groce said.

The Edwards campaign was steaming into the Iowa caucuses when the Enquirer first alleged that the former trial lawyer had a mistress who had become pregnant. Groce got a call from a reporter for the Charlotte Observer who had " a question about, and I'm quoting here, a 'love baby.' " He dismissed the allegation at the time and allowed the truth of Edwards's predicament to sink in only when he watched the former senator confess the affair on ABC's "Nightline."

Groce was "disappointed" in Edwards. "But I was more disappointed that the media forced his wife and family to live through that pain all over again."

Groce now believes Edwards lied about the affair only because he had to. "Not to cover himself," he said. "He was lying to keep it personal."

Merci Wolff, who began volunteering for Edwards in Iowa in 2004 when she was just 14, said she was missing her college freshman orientation to attend the convention as an Edwards delegate. She said the moment she fell for the candidate came after a computer factory closed in Sioux City, where she was growing up.