Joe Biden
- Party
Democratic - Date of Birth
20/11/1942 - State
Delaware - Family
Married, three children - Religion
Catholic
Senator Joe Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on November 20th, 1942.
His mother was of Irish descent, while his father, a car salesman, had English ancestry. The Biden family moved to Delaware when he was 10 years old.
He graduated from Syracuse University of Law in 1968 and was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969.
Biden was first elected to the Senate in the 1972 vote.
He took office in January, 1973, aged 30. He has now served six terms as Senator, making him the longest-serving Senator in Delaware's history.
Biden is the Chairman of the influential Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Biden voted in favour of the Iraq war in 2002.
He also serves on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which he chaired from 1987 until 1995
He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008. He dropped out of the current race in January 3rd, 2008 after polling just one per cent of votes in Iowa.
Barack Obama announced on August 23rd that he had chosen Biden to be his vice-presidential running mate.
Biden's first wife Neilia Hunter and their infant daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash in 1972 that also left their two sons seriously injured. Biden, who had just been elected to the Senate, was sworn into office at their bedside. He famously used to commute for an hour and a half by train each day from his home in Wilmington, where he cared for his sons, to his work in Washington DC. His sons have since made full recoveries.
He has one daughter from his second marriage in 1977 to Jill Jacobs.
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