Over the last 50 years of following Delaware politics, I can’t recall of any political bombshell equaling Beau Biden deciding not to run for the Senate seat his father once held unless it was the victory of 29-year-old Joe Biden himself when in 1972 he toppled a giant in state politics, the late Sen. J. Caleb Boggs.
Boggs had served three terms as a U.S. representative, two terms as governor and two terms as a U.S. senator when Joe Biden surprised the political world by winning a close election.
Boggs had not expected to run for a third term but was coaxed into running because he was the strongest candidate the Republican party could get, and besides Boggs going for a third term solved the problem of other GOP aspirants for the job who were impatiently waiting in the wings.
According to published reports, Beau Biden cited his duty as Delaware’s attorney general to focus on the prosecution of Dr. Earl B. Bradley as the main reason for his decision. Bradley, a Lewes pediatrician, has been charged with raping nine female patients ranging in age from 3 months to 13 years.
U.S. Rep. Mike Castle announced in October he was going to run for the four years remaining in the six-year Senate term Joe Biden won at the same time that he was elected vice president. Gov. Ruth Ann Minner appointed Ted Kaufman, a long-time associate of Biden’s, to the Senate post. Since Kaufman announced at the time that he was not going to run for election to the seat in 2010, it has been widely assumed that he was simply keeping the seat warm for Beau.
Since it appears that there will be more charges against the Lewes doctor, it could happen that he will decide to get what he can in a plea bargain and not go to trial at all, thus sparing his family, his patients and the state the extreme unpleasantness of a trial.
Whatever happens, national attention will be a factor in November’s elections.
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I had known only one other person with the last name of Maroon until I met Bill Maroon last Friday night at the Kent County Theatre Guild’s production of “Waiting Around,” a rollicking musical wonderfully done by the talented cast of four — Paul Janiga, Linda Hyler, John Muller and C. Kane Mowrey — with director and superb accompanist Eddie Cohee at the piano.
