Long before Joe Biden named Kamala Harris as his running mate, and even before they faced off as rival Democratic presidential candidates, the two had bonded over their mutual love for Biden’s son Beau – and grief over his death.
Harris’s friendship with Biden’s late son, who died in 2015 at the age of 46 from brain cancer, was something that Biden said he “thought a lot about” as he made the decision to name her as his running mate. “There is no one’s opinion I valued more than Beau’s and I’m proud to have Kamala standing with me on this campaign,” Biden wrote in a campaign email.
Harris and Beau Biden both served as attorney generals – she of California, he of Delaware – and began working closely together while negotiating with banks during the foreclosure crisis in 2011 and 2012.
In her memoir, Harris called him an “incredible friend and colleague” who became a close collaborator. “There were periods, when I was taking heat, that Beau and I talked every day, sometimes multiple times a day,” she wrote. “We had each other’s backs.”
After Beau’s death, Harris said at the 2016 California Democratic convention that the Biden family “truly represents our nation’s highest ideals, a powerful belief in the nobility of public service”. Joe Biden, she said, “has given so much to our country and on top of everything he has accomplished, he gave to us my dear friend Beau.”
The elder Biden endorsed Harris’s Senate campaign that year, and she endorsed him for president this year after dropping out of the race. In both cases, they mentioned Beau Biden as a reason they trusted and respected each other.
In the lead-up to Tuesday’s announcement naming Harris as his running mate, Biden, the former vice-president under Obama, often said he was looking to re-create the sort of relationship that he and Obama shared. Biden wanted a vice president “who is simpatico with where I want to take the country. We can disagree on tactic but not on strategy,” he told MSNBC.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
