Vice President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to a county Democratic event on the Delaware coast Saturday.
In remarks at the Sussex County annual jamboree, the vice president thanked the Delaware community for its outpouring of support for him and his family following the death of his son Beau, according to Sussex County Democratic Treasurer Rita Hughes. Thousands of Delaware citizens lined up for hours in early June to pay their respects to the Biden family as Beau’s body laid in state.
When speaking on Saturday about his son to the crowd, Biden choked up, Hughes told CNN.
“You were there in ways that absolutely blew me away,” Biden told the event.
To the group, Biden remembered his son as a great man and said anyone in the crowd who has lost a child knows how he is feeling, Hughes told CNN. “It has been heartbreaking,” Hughes quoted Biden as saying.
“I came because Beau wanted me to come,” Biden said, according to the Wilmington News Journal. “The reason is to say, ‘Thank you.’ This is where I got started.”
This comes as the vice president is weighing whether to make a run for the Democratic presidential nomination. He did not discuss that topic Saturday.
He was asked about the possibility during a Democratic National Committee conference call earlier this week on the Iran nuclear deal: “If I were to announce a run, I have to be able to commit to all of you that I would be able to give it my whole heart and my whole soul, and right now, both are pretty well banged up, and we’re trying to figure out that issue.”
There were more than 300 people at the Saturday event, and he talked or shook hands with all, attendees said.