All in the Family: Jill Biden

Imagine believing in your husband so much that you not only encourage him to run for president, but spend every weekend — after a full work-week — flying to Iowa to campaign on his behalf. Welcome to the life of Dr. Jill Biden.

“It’s a little challenging in that I’m always changing hats,” she said. “I’m grading papers in the car between campaign stops… It’s a little hard to transition some of the time, but life is never dull.”

Jill, spouse of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, has been an educator for 27 years. She has taught as a reading specialist, as a high school English teacher, in a mental health institution and, for the past 15 years, at a community college. Even now, in the thick of a presidential campaign, she continues to spend five days a week in the classroom before traveling to Iowa on weekends. She also proudly admits that she brought all of this on herself.

“Actually, this time, we went to Joe and asked him to run,” she said. “After Bush won again I was flabbergasted. I mean, I didn’t know anybody at all who voted for Bush. I just didn’t think he could win again. I was so disappointed in the fact that John Kerry didn’t win and that Bush’s policies were going to continue.

“We talked as a family before Joe even knew about it and we went to Joe two years ago and said, ‘We think you are the only one that can pull together the red states and the blue states and build consensus on issues that are important. We think you should run.’ And, he did.”

Although Jill and the rest of the Biden clan gladly accept responsibility for pushing the Delaware senator into becoming a candidate for president, the couple owes credit to Joe’s brother for their introduction.

“I was at the University of Delaware and I knew Joe’s brother,” she said. “Joe’s brother suggested to him that he ask me out. I had met Joe… you know how you go to fund raisers and shake hands? That really was the extent of it. When he called me so out of the blue my first thought was ‘How did he get my number?’”

Joe phone Jill on a Saturday afternoon… and she already had a date.

“He asked if I couldn’t cancel the other date because he was only in town for one night,” she said. “So, I did. I canceled the other date, because I thought it might be interesting to go out and see what he was like. We went out and, two years later, we were married.”

When Jill met Joe, he had two sons, Beau and Hunter. His previous wife and young daughter had been killed in an automobile accident.

“We dated together,” she said. “Most dates we all dated together. We got married as a family. We were all there and the boys were on the alter when we got married.”

Five years later, the couple had a daughter, Ashley. All of the children are now grown and five grandchildren have been added to the family. Since Joe previously launched a bid for the White House in the late 1980s, the family members are no strangers to national politics or Iowa.

“I spent the summer of 1987 out here in Iowa because [Joe] in Washington fighting the nomination of Robert Bork to the United States Supreme Court,” she said. “Wherever I go I run into a lot of people that supported Joe — a lot of teachers for Biden with our little apple pins on. I see a lot of the old friends who are signing up again and coming back. It’s great. I mean, I feel very comfortable. I feel very at home here in Iowa. It’s very much like Delaware in that Delaware is agricultural and the people are friendly. This is where I come. When they send people out to other states, they always send me to Iowa because this is where I like coming the best.”

Despite urging her husband to run for the nation’s highest office and working on the stump each weekend for the campaign, Jill says she probably wouldn’t be politically active if she wasn’t married to Joe.

“I would not say that I’m a political activist,” she said. “I think we care about a lot of the same things. I think we have the same morals and values. I think those are the things that tie us together. Of course, we care about a lot of the same things, but we don’t always have the same position on issues or I may care about something more than he does. I like to say that we compliment one another. I don’t think I’d be involved [in politics] otherwise. I don’t know.

“I think I am like the average American. I’m in a community college classroom. I have students who are working and going to school and have children. I think I’m dealing with real life every single day. I take that home to Joe and say, ‘Look. These students can’t afford college. They are having these problems. We have to change this. We have to change that.’ I think what I do in my life experiences has a positive impact on Joe and, hopefully, it expands to have a positive influence on other people.”

Jill’s life passions are currently split between the Biden Breast Health Initiative and education.

“In 1993, I had three close friends who had breast cancer and, actually, one of those friends died,” she said. “As an educator, my first thought was to what I could do. I mean, I’m not a medical person, but what could I do as an educator. So, I developed the Biden Breast Health Initiative. We go into the high schools and teach the young girls about breast self-exam, the importance of early detection, good breast health and health practices. Hopefully they go home and they talk to their moms and grandmoms or sisters and they practice [breast self-exam]. Early detection is the key.”

She said that, as First Lady, her primary focus would be education, but more in the realm of life-long learners.

“[My focus] would include not just the issues in the schools, but the health care issues,” she said. “I do think that we should educate young women about breast health and breast self-exam. And I also think we have to educate about childhood obesity, smoking and so many things. So it would definitely be education in the broader sense.”

She also looks at other issues, like national security, with a wide lens.

“I want to return to a time when Americans feel safe again,” she said. “That doesn’t mean just with the issue of terrorism. I want them to feel safe in all aspects of their life whether it is with their health care, sending their kids to school or crime on the streets. I think Joe can address all those issues. Of course, he is a leader in foreign policy and I think that’s what makes the difference for Joe Biden as a president versus the other candidates. I think he is the only who can really reach across the aisle, unite the red states and the blue states, work with Republicans as well as Democrats and that’s why he is successful.”