Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Washington on Saturday for private political meetings at the Naval Observatory, CNN has learned, another sign he is seriously deciding whether to jump into the Democratic presidential race.
The vice president, whose official schedule said he was planning to spend the weekend at his home in Delaware, arrived in Washington around 11 a.m.
He was set to meet with a leading Senate Democrat, two people familiar with the session said, before returning to Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden is increasingly weighing whether to challenge Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates for the party’s presidential nomination. A small team of advisers has spent weeks quietly putting together a campaign strategy and fundraising plan in case Biden decides to run. He had at least one meeting with them this week in Wilmington, one person familiar with the session told CNN.
He has told his associates he intends to make his decision in the next month, an announcement that could upend the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination.
With the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary six months away, Biden is the leading figure Democrats believe they could turn to if they needed to find an alternative to Clinton, whose favorability ratings have taken a deep hit as her email use while secretary of state is drawing deeper controversy.
Biden, 72, has a large and loyal collection of friends and advisers from more than four decades in Washington. Yet even inside his sprawling constellation, affectionately known as “Biden World,” deep divisions exist over the wisdom of him making another bid for the presidency.
