Joe Biden Beatrice Gormley (classic children's novels txt) 📖

a group of Delaware’s wealthiest businessmen. The brothers hoped that these men would donate $20,000 to pay for the radio ads.

The multimillionaires were friendly, but Joe Biden’s hackles went up when they asked him what he thought about tax reform. President Nixon had proposed a tax reform that would increase their profits, and Biden had come out against it. Now he sensed that these men wanted him to take back what he’d said on the campaign trail. Instead Joe repeated what he’d said before about tax reform.

Jimmy was disgusted. He thought Joe had lost the election with his stubbornness, and he didn’t speak to his brother on the drive home. But Joe took out a second mortgage on his house for $20,000 to pay for the radio spots.

Whether a donor represented big business or labor unions, Biden felt exactly the same about anyone who wanted to tell him how to vote. One time, Jimmy managed to get a promise from the president of the machinists’ union to donate $5,000. But when Joe and Jimmy went to Washington, DC, to pick up the check, Joe almost blew it.

The union president pressured Joe to say that if it came to a vote in the Senate, he’d vote in favor of the union. To Jimmy’s horror, Joe rudely told him what he could do with his check, and he walked out of the office. Jimmy himself quietly accepted the check.

In the last five or six weeks of the campaign, Patrick Caddell’s polls showed Joe Biden’s numbers rising. Biden’s team worked feverishly to promote their candidate. Joe’s consultant Marttila wrote and produced tabloid “newspapers” describing Biden in glowing terms. Marttila had the papers run off in Boston, Massachusetts, and trucked down to Wilmington overnight each Friday.

Early Saturday morning, bundles were dropped off at garages in neighborhoods all over Delaware. Valerie’s corps of young volunteers delivered the papers to 350,000 homes. They were rewarded with orange juice, doughnuts—and pride at being part of this exciting movement.

Joe himself kept on walking around neighborhoods, knocking on doors, asking voters to choose him on Election Day. Neilia walked with him, whispering into his ear important details about the people approaching him on the sidewalk, so he could make that personal connection. Joe kept on speaking to any group that would listen.

The polls still predicted Senator Boggs winning over Biden, but the gap was growing narrower. The Republicans began to worry. In the Wilmington News Journal, a headline read, ‘SACRIFICIAL LAMB’ MAY REWRITE SCRIPT. Ten days before the election, the polls showed the two candidates running neck and neck.

Tuesday, November 7, was Election Day. That night Joe Biden, with his extended family and campaign team, waited in the ballroom of the Hotel Du Pont for the results. At last the votes from a working-class Polish neighborhood put Joe over the top. Senator Boggs called to concede the election.

Joe was stunned. The whole room was silent for a moment, as if no one could believe they’d really won. Then Neilia’s father, Robert Hunter, broke the silence with a joke. “Well, Joe, if my daughter has to be married to a Democrat, he might as well be a United States senator.”

And Joe really was senator-elect Biden! That night, he and Neilia were too keyed up to sleep. They lay in bed talking about their future. Everything was still working out the way they’d planned before they were married: their children, their house, Joe’s career in politics. Soon they’d move on to the next step, their exciting new life together in Washington, DC.

On November 20, 1972, Joe Biden turned thirty—and finally he was old enough to become a US senator. The Bidens celebrated Joe’s birthday, along with his victory in the Senate race, with a big party at the Pianni Grill in Wilmington. It was a newsworthy event, with a TV crew to film Joe and Neilia cutting his birthday cake together.

In the following weeks, Joe felt like he was sailing along, confident and clearheaded. Now that he’d won, even more people were donating to his campaign, so he could pay back the second mortgage on the North Star house. He and Neilia were swept up in plans and arrangements. In two short months, they needed to buy a house in Washington, the right house near the right future school for Beau, Hunter, and Naomi.

Senator Biden would need people to run his office, so he had job seekers to interview. Fortunately, he already had an experienced chief of staff, Wes Barthelmes. He also wanted to get a head start on good relations with his fellow senators, so he began calling on other senators to introduce himself.

Joe Biden would be the youngest member of the new Senate, and the sixth-youngest ever to serve in the Senate. And he looked even younger than he was. Joe joked that his colleagues would think he was a page, one of the boys who delivered mail around the Senate.

Senators’ offices were assigned according to rank, and Joe’s rank was right at the bottom. So he was assigned a little office on the sixth floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, the farthest away from the Capitol. Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia let Biden use some office space until he could move into his own humble quarters.

Neilia often came along to Washington with Joe to house-hunt. They planned to keep the North Star house, but they wanted to live right in Washington, where Joe would be working. They were still short on cash, but Neilia’s father offered to lend them the down payment. They found a house they liked, near a school they liked, and they made an offer.

That weekend Joe and Neilia finally took time to savor this point in their lives. They agreed that their beautiful house in Wilmington, in North Star, would be their real family home. They’d spend every weekend there, and they’d celebrate all the holidays and special occasions there, surrounded by family and friends.

On Monday morning, December 18, Joe took