Joe Biden’s sister: ‘He’ll decide when he decides’
Vice President Biden’s sister, who also is his longtime political adviser, said she has not spoken with her brother about plans to run for president, raising more questions about how seriously he is considering a 2016 campaign.
Valerie Biden Owens on Monday said the Biden family has not been “gathering around to decide whether [Joe] will run for president. He’ll decide when he decides,” said Owens, who helped lead Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign. “I have not had a single conversation with him about it.”
Biden has set an end-of-summer deadline to determine whether he would enter the race for the 2016 Democratic nomination.
Speculation has intensified about his plans amid reports that son Beau Biden, who died in May after a fight with brain cancer, urged his father to seek the presidency.
The vice president’s Delaware supporters hope he will seriously consider a 2016 race, while acknowledging the toll of the past few months.
Margaret Aitken, who worked as his press secretary for a decade in the U.S. Senate, said she has not discussed a 2016 campaign with the vice president. But, Aitken said, “My gut feeling is that he will run.”
“Obviously, it’s not a decision you make lightly,” Aitken said. “I am sure he is doing what he has always done, sitting down with the people closest to him and having serious discussions about what a race would look like and most importantly, what impact it would have on his family. Especially now.”
Joe Biden, 72, has campaigned for president twice before: in 1988 and 2008. If he enters the 2016 campaign, the vice president would begin far behind in the polls to former secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Questions about the vice president’s plans were prompted last week by The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who wrote that, in his final days, Beau Biden pleaded with his father to seek the presidency. The paper reported on Saturday that Joe Biden “and his associates have begun to actively explore a possible presidential campaign.”
Then on Sunday, a former fundraiser and top adviser to Beau Biden, Josh Alcorn, joined the Draft Biden Super PAC that is attempting to lure the vice president into the 2016 race, lending greater credence to the idea that the vice president is more seriously considering a campaign.
A decision is expected from Joe Biden next month and the vice president has said little publicly about his plans next year.
“As the Biden family continues to go through this difficult time, the Vice President is focused on his family and immersed in his work,” Joe Biden's spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said in a statement on Sunday.
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Starkey and Milford report for The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal