When John Edwards speaks at Kresge Auditorium tonight, it will hardly be his first — or last — talk in front of college students. After all, Edwards, the 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president, has been stumping at campuses around the country since last year — talking about his anti-poverty efforts and his work on a bipartisan committee to study U.S. relations with Russia.

A former North Carolina senator who lost his seat in 2004, Edwards publicly claims to not have thought much about his political future. But many political analysts see his junkets — including the speech tonight — as part of a calculated strategy to bolster grassroots support on college campuses, maintain a national profile and prepare to possibly run for the 2008 Democratic Party nomination for president.

At 7 p.m., Edwards will “talk about his work and the importance of political activism,” according to the press release jointly issued by co-sponsors Stanford in Government (SIG) and the ASSU Speakers Bureau.

“As a charming public figure and trailblazer in the Senate, we believe that Senator Edwards will inspire the students of our University of the great import that the political process holds for our peers,” said senior Aron Kirschner, SIG chair.

Edwards has been visiting campuses big and small to talk primarily about his efforts to combat poverty. He has been to the University of Michigan, UC-Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Edwards, who became famous coined the concept of Two Americas (the haves and have-nots), has made poverty and economic inequality his flagship domestic priorities. His speech will likely follow the same mold of others he has given.

Based on his previous performances, Edwards may address Hurricane Katrina, advocate for a minimum wage increase and argue that poverty is not the result of laziness.

“Young people on college campuses have changed this country before,” he said in Athens, Ga., earlier this month, according to The Banner-Herald. “You can do it again.”

Last fall, Edwards went on a 10-campus tour, sponsored by the Center for Promise and Opportunity, called “Opportunity Rocks,” also to talk about poverty — which he deems a moral issue. He has called for an investment on par with President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty in the 1960s, which he claims reduced the problem by half in a decade.

Edwards helped found the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill last year. The center’s mission statement says it aims to help alleviate the poverty that afflicts 37 million Americans, according to the 2000 Census.

“Poverty has a face in this country, and it is, though not exclusively, based on color,” he told students at Yale in October, according to The Yale Daily News. “If you go to a poverty center...most of them are women and most are single mothers. We need to raise the minimum wage [and] it should go up to $7.50.”

“There is a hunger in America, a hunger for us to be involved in something big and important,” Edwards said in a January speech at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, according to The Fayetteville Observer. “They want to be inspired about something, and it’s not the war in Iraq.”

Edwards often mentions his wife, Elizabeth, who successfully completed a round of treatment for breast cancer, which was discovered immediately after the 2004 election. Accordingly, Edwards dedicated much of his post-election focus to caring for his wife.

The charismatic 52-year-old one-term senator is known for his rags-to-riches rise to prominence — a story often retold during the presidential campaign. The son of a mill worker, he put himself through public school before becoming a successful trial lawyer.

“Without you, nothing will happen,” he told Harvard students in November, according to Harvard Law School’s newspaper.

The senator has told college students about his childhood admiration for Robert Kennedy Jr., the Democratic frontrunner assassinated during the 1968 presidential campaign.

Edwards began a program called “College for Everyone” in North Carolina last year. High school graduates who agree to work 10 hours a week as college freshmen are reimbursed for the cost of their tuition and books. The program was tested in only one county.

Recently, Edwards has tried to broaden his appeal by expanding his foreign policy repertoire, which proved to be his greatest liability in 2004. He says he wants to have the background and a voice on foreign policy and national security issues.

He has co-chaired a task force on U.S.-Russia relations with former Housing Secretary and 1996 Republican vice-presidential nominee Jack Kemp. He has also written opinion pieces for The New York Times and appeared on Meet the Press to talk about his work on the Council on Foreign Relations taskforce.

The senator has criticized President George W. Bush for not taking proactive steps to relieve the genocide in Sudan, a country with severe human rights problems. There is a possibility that Stanford’s decision to divest its assets from companies operating in Sudan could be referenced in his speech.

Edwards has also reached out to organized labor, supporting workers on strike in Los Angeles and Miami. Just yesterday, he joined striking service workers on the picket line at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla. He joined Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa in protesting for the right of janitors at the school to form a union.

These actions are seen as a sort of litmus test for whether he should run in 2008. Edwards has already visited New Hampshire and Iowa multiple times, both crucial early primary states.

Knight Ridder reported in February that Edwards had raised nearly $5 million for Democratic candidates. An article in The State of Charleston, S.C. found that Edwards visited 34 states and three foreign countries between January 2005 and February 2006. No other potential Democratic candidate has traveled as much.

Edwards’ political action committee Web site reported that he will speak on U.S.-Russia relations at the University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Wednesday, in addition to his speech at Kresge.

On Thursday, Edwards will visit College Track, a program that his Web site said “helps low-income students graduate from high school and get into college.”

On Sunday, he will deliver the keynote at a forum on transatlantic ties in Brussels.