Vice President Joe Biden’s charitable foundation launched As You Are, an outreach and acceptance campaign on behalf of LGBTQ youth.
In a statement, the former vice president said, ““I’m so proud to announce the Biden Foundation has launched this campaign. We’ll use our resources to highlight the harms of family rejection—and lift up research, best practices, and personal stories to powerfully show the significant value of family acceptance.”
A look at what prospective Democratic presidential candidates are up to:
Former vice president Joe Biden has endorsed Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, the Democratic candidate running for Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat. In an email sent out from Sinema’s Senate campaign, Biden said:
“I am proud to support my friend Kyrsten Sinema in her campaign for Senate. Kyrsten understands the challenges and opportunities that Arizona families face every day and will make a great Senator.
I’ve seen first-hand how Kyrsten gets things done for Arizona. She was indispensable to our work to strengthen the landmark Violence Against Women Act and brought a unique perspective, having worked in communities and schools. Together with Kyrsten, we expanded protections against domestic abuse and sexual assault.
Kyrsten also cares deeply for the brave men and women who wear our nation’s uniform. From standing up for our active duty service members to her work to ensure all veterans get the care they deserve, Kyrsten is tenacious in delivering results.
Kyrsten is as hard-working and principled as they come. She has the rare ability to cut through the political games and work across the aisle to get things done. These qualities can be tough to find today, but are as important as ever to solve our nation’s toughest challenges. We need more people like Kyrsten in the U.S. Senate.”
Arizona’s primary election is scheduled for August 28. Both Larry Sabato and the Cook Political Report project the Arizona Senate race as a tossup.
Former Vice President Joe Biden endorsed four down ballot candidates running for Secretary of State in key states for the midterm and presidential election cycles. He made the announcement in an email sent out to supporters of American Possibilities, his political action committee. He cited protection of voting rights as his reason for the endorsements, writing that one of the best ways to accomplish this goal was “by electing strong Secretaries of State, the folks responsible for overseeing elections, all across the country.”
Biden has maintained his public profile by endorsing several state and congressional candidates across the country in the past several months, fueling speculation about whether he is considering another White House run. Biden told the Washington Post that he did not know what he was going to do.
The four candidates to receive Biden’s endorsement were attorney Jena Griswold in Colorado, former Wayne State University Law School dean Jocelyn Benson in Michigan, Assemblyman Nelson Araujo in Nevada, and State Rep. Kathleen Clyde in Ohio. All four states have open races for governor because of term-limited incumbents. Only Colorado does not have a Senate race in the current cycle. All four are competitive swing states in presidential elections.
The significance of the secretaries of state who are elected in this cycle is that they will become the top elections officials in their respective states for the 2020 presidential cycle, which will make them responsible for managing primaries, protecting the integrity of the election systems and process, and certifying the results.
Griswold won her party’s nomination in the Colorado primary this evening.
A look at what prospective Democratic presidential candidates are up to:
Multiple news organizations are reporting that former vice president Joe Biden has endorsed Tom Perez for DNC chairman. The Perez campaign has not yet sent out an announcement or posted it on social media. According to the Daily Beast, Perez was telling DNC members gathered in Houston last weekend that he had locked down Biden’s support:
Since as recently as last week, Perez had been telling DNC members that he had secured Biden’s endorsement. At the site of last weekend’s DNC forum in Houston, Texas, Perez was discussing the future of the Democratic Party with a private gathering of DNC members. According to two sources familiar with the exchanges, Perez excitedly said, in an apparent effort to drum up more support from DNC members, that the former vice president had his back. “And that’s why Joe Biden is coming out for me next week,” one DNC member recalled Perez saying.
UPDATE: Here’s the tweet from Tom Perez
Twelve days after leaving office, former vice president Joe Biden announced the launch of the Biden Foundation. According to the foundation’s website, it will “build upon Vice President and Dr. Biden’s lifelong commitment to protect and advance the rights and opportunities of all people through educational programming and public policy analysis.”
The statement from Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden:
Wilmington, DE – My dad used to have an expression: “It’s a lucky person who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they’re about to do and thinks it still matters.” Jill and I have been very lucky these past decades. We look forward to this new chapter where we will continue our work to ensure that everyone—no matter their income level, race, gender, age, or sexuality— is treated with dignity and gets a fair shot at achieving the American Dream. That’s why we are honored that a group of long-time friends and supporters have begun the work of founding the Biden Foundation to build on our lifelong commitment to issues that have always motivated us.
The foundation’s work will focus on foreign policy, cancer research, and ending violence against women, and other issues.
One interesting point on the Biden Foundation website: it will not accept donations from foreign citizens, organizations or countries. This is presumably a response to the fundraising practices of the Clinton Foundation which caused so much controversy during Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Vice President Joe Biden was visiting the U.S. Senate today when he had this very interesting exchange with reporters:
Vice President Joe Biden told a small group of reporters Monday that he may run for president in 2020.
“Yeah, I am. I am going to run in 2020,” Biden said when asked if he would run for office again. When asked what role he would seek, the 74-year-old vice president responded: “For president. And also, you know so, what the hell man, anyway.”
The vice president said, however, he wasn’t making a commitment to run when reporters asked if he was kidding.
“I’m not committing not to run. I’m not committed to anything. I learned a long time ago, fate has a strange way of intervening,” he said.
Biden would be 77 years old on Election Day in 2020.
If he did throw his hat in the ring, he would probably have the most name recognition of anyone in the rumored Democratic field. Democrats from all ends of the spectrum admire and respect him for his work as senator and vice president. The only downside other than his age would be the fact that he has already run unsuccessfully for the nomination twice. The upside: the Melania Trump RNC speech controversy would neutralize the plagiarism scandal that derailed Biden’s 1988 run.
On the other hand, there is another real question Democrats will have to ask themselves: would a Biden 2020 run help, hurt, or delay their efforts to rebuild the party’s bench, as well as deny an opportunity for new national leaders to emerge?
According to NBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), former Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-Md.) have withdrawn from consideration for the DNC chairman election.
Two names from the Obama administration have also surfaced: Vice President Joe Biden (who, according to a spokesman, declined interest in the position) and outgoing Labor Secretary Tom Perez. Keep in mind Perez was considered as a potential running mate by Hillary Clinton earlier this year, and NBC News also points out that he may opt to bide his time and run for governor of Maryland in 2018 against incumbent Republican Larry Hogan.
As of this morning, the candidates who are in the race or have expressed interest are:
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