On Tuesday, May 26, Vice President Joe Biden came to Denver, and I was fortunate enough to take part in three events involving his visit.
The first was a town hall meeting held at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science at 2:00pm. I was told to arrive by 12:30pm, and I waited outside in a crowd of several dozen people for just a few minutes, until we were ushered into a small room with bright lights, many cameras and a platform with stools surrounded by chairs and bleachers.
Promptly at 2:00, the Vice President came out from behind a blue curtain, along with Colorado's US Senator Michael Bennet, the Secretaries of Labor, HUD and Agriculture, and the US Trade Rep. Biden, wearing the same outfit that he had appeared in earlier that day in Washington at the announcement of the Supreme Court nominee, led a discussion of the recovery package, especially as it relates to the "new energy economy", and took about half a dozen questions from the audience, who seemed to appear from all walks of life. He was his usual outgoing and entertaining self, much as he appears on TV.
When the meeting ended, around 3:30pm, I was taken behind the blue curtain to my second event, a "meet and greet" with the Vice President put on by Organizing For America, to thank about a dozen of us who had worked in various capacities during the Obama campaign.
We chatted with the Secret Service for a while until Biden came from another room and posed with us, one at a time, for his official photographer. As an aside, not only am I from his home state of Delaware, but I graduated from high school with his younger brother (his sister, who has since managed all of his campaigns, was my history teacher).
I worked on his first US Senate campaign and was one of his interns during college, and when I received my Masters degree in Foreign Affairs, he got me my first job as a Special Assistant in Washington! But I had not talked to him since 1980 when I attended a party at the World Trade Center during the Democratic Convention in NYC. This time, he seemed just like the "good ol' Joe" from Wilmington that I had known long ago. In our short conversation, he was as down to earth as ever.
The last event was a 4:15pm fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee at a private home in Cherry Creek. I was told by the valets and security that I was the last person of approximately twenty to arrive, but luckily, I beat the Vice President there! We were offered sushi and chocolate covered tiramisu squares while we waited, and I caught up with some people I had not seen since the campaign.
Shortly before 6pm, we were lined up outside a closed door, and then ushered in for individual photo opportunities with Biden. After that, we gathered in the living room where he was once again introduced. Although he began his comments behind a very official looking VP podium, he soon sat with us at one of the comfortable sofas, and although we had been told in advance that he would take no questions, he immediately changed the format to one of a very candid, give and take conversation which lasted over an hour.
His behind the scenes accounts of his interactions with the President, his insights into the world situation, and his personal anecdotes on his life in politics made the hour go by all too quickly. As he left the room to head to Colorado Springs, he jokingly told my husband to "get me back to Delaware", but I replied that I still had work to do in Colorado.....my fourth event of the day was to hold my monthly meeting of the Castle Rock Democrats at 7pm, so I dashed to Castle Rock (I was late) to continue trying to implement on a grassroots level what the Vice President is working on back in DC.
My day with Joe Biden was fun while it lasted, but I was just as glad to get back to the trenches.