Joseph R. Biden Jr., the senior U.S. senator from Delaware, almost resigned before his first term, in 1973, began.

“I never thought I would stay, and I certainly didn’t think I would stay this long,” Biden said in an interview last week.

People close to him were already talking to Delaware’s governor about Biden’s replacement just weeks before he took the oath of office, because, shortly after his election, Biden’s wife and daughter were killed in a car accident that also injured his two young sons.

Influential senators at the time, including Michael Mansfield of Montana, persuaded Biden to at least serve six months of that first term, Biden said, telling Biden he owed it to the voters, and to his family because they had worked so hard during the campaign.

Mansfield “probably saved my life. ... He at least saved my sanity,” Biden said.

“I learned the one way to deal with a horrible tragedy is to find something that takes all your energy, so between caring for the boys and diving into my work in the Senate, I survived.”

Biden was only 29 when he was elected, making him the fifth-youngest senator ever when he was sworn in at the age of 30 years, 44 days.

During that first term, Biden began commuting on public trains from Wilmington, where his sons were recovering, to Washington, a trip he continues to make today during his sixth consecutive term in the Senate.

In Wilmington, Biden also teaches a constitutional law seminar at the law school of Widener University.

To make sure the students get their money’s worth from his class, Biden is “maniacal” about not missing class time because of the campaign, said Robert L. Hayman, who co-teaches the course.

“I just assume he doesn’t sleep at all,” Hayman said, remembering a recent week when Biden flew to Las Vegas for a national debate, the Senate for a vote and his birthday celebrations, and then back to Wilmington for class.

Though he earned laughs and applause for delivering the only one-word answer to a “yes-or-no” question at a recent debate, Biden is not usually a one-liner type of guy, Hayman said.

“He just knows so darn much. He’s never happy with a superficial reading of things,” Hayman said. The media “may not always get short sound bites from him, but ... the students never feel that they are getting a cursory read.”

In the classroom, Biden’s proficient knowledge of issues provides in-depth discussions, sometimes leaving students in tears, or even prompting applause after he tells them first-hand accounts of the plights of soldiers in Iraq, Hayman said.

Despite Hayman’s accounts of Biden’s moving and effective classroom speeches, in the past, Biden’s mouth was called by The Washington Post his “Achilles’ heel” on the campaign trail.

But John D. Daniello, chairman of the Delaware Democratic Committee, sees Biden’s habit of speaking off-the-cuff as an asset.

“The national news media loves picking on him in terms of putting his foot in his mouth, but I would rather have somebody that maybe doesn’t say the politic thing, but says what he feels,” Daniello said.

The residents of Delaware, according to Daniello, are “impressed with (Biden’s) sometimes brutal honesty in terms of the issues. ... When he says something he means it.”

Daniello was familiar with Biden during his first campaign for the Senate, when the 29-year-old Biden, who had only served at the county level, beat popular incumbent J. Caleb Boggs.

Boggs, a former Delaware governor, was “the most popular elected official we’ve ever had,” Daniello said.

But Biden “went everywhere, stuck to his own message, talked about what he thought the issues were,” Daniello said.

After 35 years in the Senate, the issue of rights for women and children has been the most important of his career, Biden said.

Before his career in public office, Biden worked as a public defender, and his experiences working with people from the public housing projects in East Wilmington shaped his future priorities.

In 1994, he authored the Violence Against Women Act, which established a national hotline where women who are abused can get help, and provided funds to combat domestic violence and other gender-based crimes.

Early in his Senate career, Biden said he received a report on violent crime, which showed the number of young male victims had decreased in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but the number of women who were victims of violent crime rose by 50 percent.

“I thought ‘what the hell’s that all about?’ ... I thought violent crime was an equal opportunity employer ... (and I) became convinced there was a need to expose this dirty little secret,” Biden said.

Biden’s motivation in fighting domestic violence is simple: it’s a matter of justice.
The senator remembers his parents’ outrage when a neighbor used corporal punishment on his children. “I was raised in a family environment and faith (that taught) the most serious sin you can commit is the abuse of power,” Biden said.

His father taught him “it takes a small man to hit a small child, and a coward to raise his hand to a woman,” he said.

On the Net: www.joebiden.com


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