Opinion: Beau Biden says no -- a pickup for GOP in Delaware?
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Call it another casualty of last week’s stunning upset in Massachusetts, when Republican Scott Brown defeated the Democratic establishment in a state that President Obama carried in 2008 by 26 points.
With Brown’s election last Tuesday, Senate Republicans got their 41st vote and Democrats lost their 60-vote super-majority. Today, Republicans may have seen their chances increase to pick up another seat when Delaware’s Atty. Gen. Beau Biden, a U.S. Army captain and son of Vice President Joe Biden, opted not to run for the Senate seat once held by his father. He announced this morning:
I have a duty to fulfill as attorney general, and the immediate need to focus on a case of great consequence. And that is what I must do. Therefore I cannot and will not run for the United States Senate in 2010. I will run for re-election as attorney general.
The younger Biden’s decision leaves veteran Republican congressman and former two-term governor Mike Castle, one of the most successful politicians in Delaware history, still waiting for a Democratic opponent.
So if the popular 40-year-old son of a popular former senator -- who would be assured of tremendous and personal support from the Obama White House -- is opting not to try for the Senate, what does that say about the Democrats’ chances of hanging onto power?
-- Johanna Neuman
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