![]() "I will never again think of something as impossible."īut the joy Biden and his family and friends felt that night was short lived. "I can remember the thought as if it was yesterday," he says. Kaufman remembers what he felt at the victory party that night. On Election Day, as Republican President Nixon carried Delaware in a landslide, Democrat Joe Biden beat Boggs by 3,162 votes - by all accounts, an improbable upset. "Neilia, Joe's late wife, taught school and I taught high school, and these kids got up on weekends at 6 o'clock, and we hand-delivered these newspapers six weeks in a row." Valerie Biden Owens calls that first campaign a children's crusade because of its many youthful volunteers. There were thousands of people distributing material every single weekend." Marttila says the campaign "was just on fire for the last month." ![]() John Marttila, one of Biden's few paid consultants in 1972, says Biden won because he had "the hardest-working campaign I've ever been part of. Valerie Biden Owens fondly remembers, "Our radio ad was a guy on our staff with a portable tape recorder, putting the microphone in the face of our mailman." At one point, the ads included "an anonymous person at the mall."īut the main way Biden's message got out was through position papers that the campaign hand-delivered. It relied on position papers on newsprint and a few radio ads. He talked about the environment and civil rights and about change. In 1972, the Vietnam War was raging, and Biden said it was time for the U.S. Kaufman says that was "pretty much the essence" of how Biden won. Boggs and I could just go down to the football stadium at the University of Delaware and people saw the two of us, they'd pick me.' " ![]() "The way he used to express it : 'If Sen. People were looking for answers to some of these big questions," Kauffman says. Boggs was beloved, but these were changing times. "I said I would, but I said, 'Joe, I've got to be honest with you I really don't think you have much of a chance to win this race,' " Kaufman recalls. and was active in Democratic politics when Biden asked him to help out his campaign. He was a member of the New Castle, Del., county council when he decided to take on Boggs - a Delaware institution who had served in the Senate, the House and as governor. Back in 1972, Joe Biden lacked the senatorial stature he has now, but he made up for it in energy and ambition.
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