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A loyal family friend was appointed to Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s vacant Senate seat Monday as an apparent placeholder until Beau Biden can inherit it upon his return from active duty in Iraq.
In one of her final acts in office, Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D) selected Ted Kaufman, a longtime adviser and former chief of staff to the elder Biden, to be the state’s next senator.
Biden (D) won election as Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate but was simultaneously reelected to the Senate on Nov. 4. As he cannot take both jobs, there has been intense speculation since Election Day about whether Beau, the incumbent’s eldest son, would be his political heir.
But Beau Biden, the state attorney general, could not accept the appointment because he was deployed to Iraq with the Army National Guard. He pulled his name from consideration a week ago.
Kaufman made it clear after the announcement that he wouldn’t try to run for the seat in a 2010 special election.
“I am very comfortable with retiring after two years. I don’t think Delaware’s appointed senator should spend the next two years running for office,” Kaufman said after the announcement, according to press reports.
Kaufman has lots of Washington connections, having served on Joe Biden’s staff for 22 years, but it’s not clear that he could raise the money he would need even if he wanted to.
He is serving as co-chairman of Biden’s vice presidential transition team and has been a senior adviser on all of Biden’s federal campaigns. He is also president of Public Strategies, a political and management consulting firm in Wilmington.
And while Sen. Biden has kept quiet publicly about whom he’d like to see in his spot, he and Minner have a strong working relationship and he had her ear on the appointment.
Biden praised his aide’s appointment and sought to tamp down speculation that it’s a placeholder for his son.
“In making her decision, the governor has made it clear that whoever seeks the office in 2010 will do so from a level playing field,” he said in a statement.
But the vice president-elect also made his preference for his son clear.
“It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General Beau Biden, would make a great United States senator — just as I believe he has been a great attorney general,” Biden said. “But Beau has made it clear, from the moment he entered public life, that any office he sought, he would earn on his own. He proved that two years ago when he turned down an appointment as attorney general. Instead, he ran on his own and won election.”
He went on to say that if Beau Biden “chooses to run for the Senate in the future, he will have to run and win on his own. He wouldn’t have it any other way.”
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