MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) – Former vice presidential candidate John Edwards said Friday he has “serious questions” about U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.

Edwards, a former Democratic senator from North Carolina and a trial lawyer, spoke to reporters at a fund-raiser and birthday party for state Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, a strong Edwards supporter. Edwards planned to attend other Democratic events in the state over the weekend.

Edwards condemned the White House for withholding some documents that Senate Democrats wanted on the personal views of Judge Roberts.

Edwards said the papers are critical to review whether Roberts lobbied internally for socially conservative causes while working in the Reagan administration.

“I think the Senate is entitled to those documents, the things he wrote and said as a lawyer working for the United States,” said Edwards, who did not seek re-election to the Senate last November.

Edwards voted in favor of Roberts’ nomination to the federal appeals court, but said Friday that nomination to the Supreme Court was a very different thing.

“Now he has a judicial record, which he did not have before,” Edwards said. “He answered a lot of hard questions in his confirmation hearing for the D.C. circuit by saying it is the job of a circuit court to follow settled law.

That’s a fine answer for a circuit court, but not an adequate answer for the Supreme Court because that court interprets law and can make legal precedent.”

Earlier in the day, in a Washington speech to the American Constitution Society, Edwards said documents released from Roberts’ years as a special assistant in the Reagan administration’s Department of Justice showed him to be a young “partisan for conservative causes.”

He called Roberts “someone who opposed efforts to remedy discrimination on the basis of sex and race. Someone who opposed measures to protect voting rights.”

Edwards said he has not yet reached a final opinion on whether Roberts should be confirmed.

“I have serious questions about him and would insist on those being addressed in the confirmation hearing,” he said.

Edwards has been traveling the country, raising money for Democratic candidates through his One America Committee. The political action committee has so far raised $2.9 million for Democrats in the 2006 elections.

During his third visit to New Hampshire this year, Edwards planned stops in Bow, Plymouth and Swanzey over the weekend. He also planned to meet privately with members of Manchester’s Latino community and soon-to-be-laid-off workers at the Kraft Foods plant in Berlin.

Edwards said he has not decided whether to run for President in 2008, but if he does, he has the core of a New Hampshire organization, including D’Allesandro, ready to help him. Edwards finished fourth in the 2004 primary.