Biden visits Warren as he considers bid
WASHINGTON – Vice President Joe Biden left the seclusion of the Delaware home where he’s been weighing a presidential run to meet Saturday with Elizabeth Warren – another influential Democrat who has faced calls to enter the 2016 race.
The unusual weekend huddle with Warren, a Massachusetts senator, took place at the Naval Observatory, the vice president’s official residence, said an individual familiar with the meeting. An Obama administration official said Biden had traveled at the last minute to Washington for a private meeting and planned to return to Delaware the same day. Both of the individuals spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the meeting publicly.
Biden’s meeting with Warren was the latest sign that the vice president is seriously considering entering the race, and that he’s increasingly discussing it with Democratic leaders outside of his small cadre of longtime advisers.
Warren was the subject of an intense lobbying campaign by a group called Draft Warren that sought to persuade her to enter the race. Warren ruled out running in 2016, and a super PAC similarly named Draft Biden later emerged and has been laying the groundwork for a potential Biden candidacy.
Warren, a vocal advocate for economic fairness and Wall Street reform, has notably refrained from endorsing Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders or the other candidates. She retains the vocal support of many in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, making her endorsement one of the most highly sought in the primary.
Man who killed guard got a ‘raw deal’
NEW YORK – A man who gunned down a security guard at a federal building in Manhattan before killing himself was a whistle-blower who had been given “a raw deal” by the agency that fired him, a New Jersey congressman who took up the man’s case said Saturday.
Rep. Bill Pascrell said he did not know what made Kevin Downing, a military veteran who had once been employed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, open fire Friday at the New York federal building.
“What made him snap?” Pascrell said. “I don’t know.”
Associated Press
