Biden Set to Enter Presidential Race
Jan. 27, 2007 — -- Joe Biden, the experienced and garrulous chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and six-term Delaware Democratic senator, will file paperwork on Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission to officially kick off his second presidential campaign. His Web site, JoeBiden.com, will be launched that day as well.
Biden, 64, is bypassing the step of first forming a presidential exploratory committee, a step taken by Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Barack Obama, D-Ill., and John McCain, R-Ariz. -- and proceeding right to forming his campaign committee.
On the same day he files the paperwork for his candidacy, Biden will chair Senate hearings on Iraq featuring the scheduled testimony of former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright, a Democrat, and Henry Kissinger, a Republican, which will no doubt serve to underline what Biden feels are his greatest strengths as a candidate in this turbulent era -- foreign policy expertise and national security gravitas.
After speaking at a Democratic National Committee meeting in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, Feb. 3, as other presidential hopefuls will do, Biden will visit the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire on Monday, Feb. 5, and Tuesday, Feb. 6. He has approximately $3 million in his campaign coffers, and has hired to run his campaign Luis Navarro, former political director for the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
Biden, 64, enters a crowded field and risks lagging in the shadows of more buzzy candidates like Clinton and Obama, and those who have been laying down groundwork for a race for quite some time, such as former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C.
Biden advisers argue that it remains early in the process, and that ultimately Democratic primary and caucus voters will consider Biden's national security and international relations expertise invaluable.
"He may not be the flavor of the month right now," says Larry Rasky, who served as press secretary for Biden's presidential run in 1987 and will serve as communications director in this campaign, "but he has a unique position in this race as the most respected voice in the party on national security and foreign relations issue."
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