"An Exciting Development..."

Joe Biden Said to Be Taking New Look at Presidential Run

The New York Times
Amy Chozickaug
August 1, 2015

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington in 2010, when she was secretary of state. Credit Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his associates have begun to actively explore a possible presidential campaign, which would upend the Democratic field and deliver a direct threat to Hillary Rodham Clinton, several people who have spoken to Mr. Biden or his closest advisers say.

Mr. Biden’s advisers have started to reach out to Democratic leaders and donors who have not yet committed to Mrs. Clinton or who have grown concerned about what they see as her increasingly visible vulnerabilities as a candidate.

The conversations, often fielded by Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti, have taken place through hushed phone calls and quiet lunches. In most cases, they have grown out of an outpouring of sympathy for Mr. Biden since the death of his son Beau, 46, in May.

There were talks this year that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., at the National Defense University in Washington in April, could be preparing to run for president. Friends now say that he is focusing on his family.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Hillary Rodham Clinton at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2010. They have been friends for decades.Biden and Clinton: Friends With Awkward TwistSEPT. 14, 2013
On Saturday, the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported that Mr. Biden had been holding meetings at his residence, “talking to friends, family and donors about jumping in” to challenge Mrs. Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two nominating states.

One longtime Biden supporter said the vice president had been deeply moved by his son’s desire for him to run.

“He was so close to Beau and it was so heartbreaking that, frankly, I thought initially he wouldn’t have the heart,” the supporter, Michael Thornton, a Boston lawyer, said in an interview. “But I’ve had indications that maybe he does want to — and ‘that’s what Beau would have wanted me to do.’ ”

Mr. Biden’s path, should he run, would not be easy. Mrs. Clinton has enormous support among Democrats inspired by the idea of electing a woman as president, and her campaign has already raised millions of dollars.

Additionally, Mr. Biden, who is 72, has in the past proved to be prone to embarrassing gaffes on the campaign trail. He would also face the critical task of building a field operation.

One Democrat with direct knowledge of the conversations described the outreach as a heady combination of donors and friends of Mr. Biden’s wanting to prop him up in his darkest hours, and of recent polls showing Mrs. Clinton’s support among independents declining, suggesting there could be a path to the nomination for the vice president.

Ms. Dowd reported that as Beau Biden lay dying from brain cancer, he “tried to make his father promise to run, arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.” Mr. Biden’s other son, Hunter, also encouraged him to run, she wrote.

The support Mr. Biden has garnered speaks to growing concerns among Democrats that Mrs. Clinton could lose in Iowa and New Hampshire, as the populist message of one of her opponents, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, draws swelling crowds.

“The reality is it’s going to be a tough, even-steven kind of race, and there’s that moment when a lot of party establishment would start exactly this kind of rumble: ‘Is there anybody else?’ ” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist.

At the same time, the slow trickle of news about Mrs. Clinton’s use of private email when she was secretary of state, and the coming Benghazi hearings, may be distracting some voters from the core message of her campaign: the need to lift the middle class.

“It’s not that we dislike Hillary, it’s that we want to win the White House,” said Richard A. Harpootlian, a lawyer and Democratic donor in Columbia, S.C., who met with Mr. Ricchetti before Beau Biden died. “We have a better chance of doing that with somebody who is not going to have all the distractions of a Clinton campaign.”

A spokeswoman for the Clinton campaign declined to comment.

In a July 30 Quinnipiac poll, 57 percent of voters said Mrs. Clinton was not honest and trustworthy, and 52 percent said she did not care about their needs or problems. The same poll showed Mr. Biden with his highest favorability rating, 49 percent, in seven years, with 58 percent saying he was honest and trustworthy and 57 percent saying he cared about them. But Mrs. Clinton’s numbers are still strong, especially among likely Democratic primary voters.

“The No. 1 thing voters want is a candidate who is honest and trustworthy, and the veep is leading in those polls,” said William Pierce, executive director of Draft Biden, a “super PAC” that is trying to build enthusiasm for a possible candidacy.

Mr. Biden could still decide not to run. Confidants say they expect him to make something official by early September. Other than by not ruling out a run, and by holding preliminary meetings, he has not openly fueled speculation about his candidacy. As of Saturday, he had no trips planned to Iowa or New Hampshire in the coming weeks. But an intermediary recruited by the vice president’s office has been in touch with potential staff members who have not yet signed on to the Clinton campaign.

Kendra Barkoff, a Biden spokeswoman, said, “As the Biden family continues to go through this difficult time, the vice president is focused on his family and immersed in his work.”

A 2016 run would be the third time Mr. Biden, a longtime senator from Delaware, had sought the presidency, which friends say is his ultimate dream.

Mr. Obama later chose Mr. Biden as his running mate. In the early months of the 2016 campaign, the president has been careful not to undermine or wholeheartedly endorse either his former secretary of state or his vice president.

“The president has said that the best political decision he’s ever made in his career has been to ask Joe Biden to run as his vice president,” Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, said last week.

Friends described Mr. Biden’s relationship with Mrs. Clinton in the Senate as cordial and warm. But in his long career in Democratic politics, Mr. Biden has clashed with former President Bill Clinton, and his relationship with Mrs. Clinton has not been without awkwardness. One close Biden confidant, Ron Klain, has been in contact with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign about helping her prepare for the Democratic debates, a sign some people interpreted as evidence that Mr. Biden would decide against a run.

Mr. Ricchetti, a White House aide in the Clinton administration who is now Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, began talking to donors and supporters in the months before Beau Biden died.

In recent weeks, those talks, with local elected officials and party leaders, started again, mostly because well-wishers were calling to check on the Biden family. The talk inevitably drifted to 2016, and many of these Democrats urged Mr. Biden to seriously consider getting into the race, said people with knowledge of the talks who agreed to discuss private conversations only anonymously.

Mr. Ricchetti declined to comment.

The speculation intensified on Thursday when friends of Mrs. Clinton’s spotted Mr. Ricchetti having breakfast at the Four Seasons in Washington with Louis B. Susman, a major donor and former ambassador to Britain. Fox News reported on the meeting.

Mr. Susman — who has already made the maximum donation allowed in the primary, $2,700, to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, and who is a longtime friend of the Biden family — dismissed any implication that he was discussing the vice president’s plans. “He wasn’t testing the waters with me,” Mr. Susman said of Mr. Ricchetti. “There was never any discussion of the presidential campaign or money.”

Mr. Biden is by no means a virtuoso campaigner. But his entry into the race would add an unbridled, often unscripted passion for the presidency that some Democrats say the ever-cautious Mrs. Clinton at times lacks.

One Democratic donor with direct knowledge of the overtures from the Biden camp said Mr. Biden had already thought about how he would position himself in the race, delivering an economic message to the left of Mrs. Clinton’s while embracing Obama administration policies, like health care reform, that are widely popular among Democrats.