A.P.

DALLAS (AP) — Frederick Baron, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser and wealthy Texas trial lawyer who built a fortune representing hundreds in asbestos exposure lawsuits, died Thursday. He was 61.
Mr. Baron, the national finance chairman for John Edwards’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004 and whose link to the scandal of Mr. Edwards’s mistress this summer put him in an unwanted spotlight, died of complications from cancer, said Harrison Hickman, a family spokesman.