As the race for the White House rolls on, English professor Jill Biden made two local appearances campaigning for her husband Joe, who formerly served as a United States senator from Delaware and later as vice president of the U.S.
Biden made two stops on Friday, one in Lancaster and another in Rock Hill later in the day. The event in Lancaster was held at the Craft Stand, a craft beer store and bar. The event saw a sizable turn out relative to the size of the venue in spite of a chilly, persistent rain.
Biden’s speech was preceded by remarks from Mandy Powers Norrell, an attorney and Democratic member of South Carolina’s House of Representatives.
Norrell opened her remarks by commenting on the “great crowd” and how big of a deal the event was. She went on to say that when she looks at a candidate that is worth supporting, she looks beyond their “policy” and “talking points.” She said that she wants to “know about who they are as a person” and wants to know about their lives. She said that she thinks that is why it’s “awesome” to have “a candidate’s spouse here” which she said gives “insight into their lives.”
Norrell talked about Lancaster’s former status as having a thriving town due to the presence of a cotton mill which has since closed.
“It has taken us longer to recover because we were overly dependent on a single industry,” Norrell said. “A lot of candidates have seen the parts of South Carolina that are just booming now where our populations are growing but then we have other places where our populations are kind of shrinking and that’s in our rural areas. So it means so much that [Biden] would come here and see this part of South Carolina. We have not had a lot of campaigns come here and we remember the ones who do.”
Biden began her speech by saying that while most people know who she is because of who her husband is, she said that that is only one part of who she is. She went on to talk about her childhood and how her goals as a child were to have a marriage that resembled the marriage of her parents as well as a career. Biden spoke about meeting and marrying her husband and the ways that life changed following their wedding.
“In some ways, being married to a senator and becoming a mother overnight [referencing her husband’s two sons from his first marriage], was an experience I couldn’t have anticipated,” Biden said. “But in other ways, we’re just like every other family, you know, balancing life and work. Joe commuted every day on the train to Washington, D.C. from Wilmington while I took care of the kids.”
She said during that time she continued her education, pursuing her doctorate in education and said that she has worked as an educator for more than 30 years.
“In fact, last night I was up [until] all hours because I had to post my grades, so I was posting fifty grades on my computer so my students could receive them this morning,” Biden said.
Biden said that she has watched her husband’s career closely and spoke about him going “up against so many odds and accomplish the seemingly impossible.”
“He wrote the Violence Against Women Act when his colleagues thought we shouldn’t sort of meddle in private family affairs and he fought for four years to get it passed. He shepherded in the Recovery Act and oversaw its implementation, saving millions of Americans jobs,” Biden said. “He made sure that the Affordable Care Act passed, even though it was so close to failing.”
Biden said that “anyone can tell you what they want to do, but Joe Biden can tell you what he’s done.”
Following Biden’s speech, she said in an interview with The Johnsonian that while there are a number of issues that the United States is currently facing — including climate change, gun control, education and foreign policy — the biggest issue, in her opinion, is that of leadership.
“I think it all comes down to leadership. It has to be the commander-in-chief who says ‘these are all the issues I’m going to address and this is how I’m going to do it,’” Biden said. “I think that’s what’s so important, that we have someone who you can be proud of as your president, who is strong, who is a leader, who has experience.”
With student loans for those seeking degrees in higher education reaching a crisis level, Biden said that she sees two ways to combat the problem.
“You can take it in different directions. One of the ways is, of course, for free community college which I’m a strong proponent of. During our administration, President Obama asked me to lead the College Promise. So I went all across this nation and we now have free community college in over 400 communities and it’s paid for in all different kinds of ways. If students just take a couple courses in high school at a community college level, go into community college and then [it would] be free, and then they only have two years of four-year college to pay for,” Biden said, though she acknowledged that that path is “not for everybody.”
“A lot of kids want to go to a four-year right away and that’s their dream. So the way Joe is going to handle that is based on your income. So if you go to school and you come out and you make less than $25,000 then you will have no student debt. But if you make over $25,000 it’s five percent of your discretionary, disposable income. So once you pay your housing and your taxes and your food, the income that you have left, that’s what your payment will be based on. And after twenty years of that, then there’s loan forgiveness.”
