Beau Biden ran for attorney general on a campaign promise to go after child predators.
File this one under be-careful-what-you-wish-for.
Biden has been confronted with the ultimate nightmare of a case — the prosecution of a Sussex County pediatrician accused of preying on his own patients in conduct so vile that people cannot bring themselves to read about it.
Delaware has not been so fixated on the criminal justice system since the murder trial of Tom Capano and the baby-killing case of Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson simultaneously consumed the state in the late 1990s.
The furor over Baybees Doctor Earl Bradley coincided with an election year, in which Biden’s four-year term as the Democratic attorney general was up and he was regarded as the obvious choice to run for the Senate seat left behind by his father-the-vice-president.
Not only was Biden the Democrats’ favorite for sentimental reasons, but for political reasons. He easily looked like the strongest candidate against Mike Castle, the Republican congressman riding a 30-year winning streak that also made him the governor and lieutenant governor.
Biden-against-Castle had all the makings of the premier Senate race in the country for 2010, a clash to decide whether the Biden name or a Republican comeback would prevail.
Until Monday. With the mouse click of email sent to political supporters and the press, Biden took himself out of the Senate election and committed to running for re-election.
There was no doubt Biden had his eye on the Senate campaign. Once Bradley turned into Public Enemy No. 1 in December, however, it was politically impossible for Biden to talk about the Senate without opening himself to the charge that his priority was not in prosecuting an unspeakable crime but his own political ambition. Then it became impossible to run for it.
“I gave it [the Senate] serious consideration. As the case moved on the last several weeks, it just became clearer and clearer I could not do both. It’s a matter of incredible importance to the office and the state, and to mount a campaign for the U.S. Senate, they were incompatible,” Biden said.
“I’m going to take very seriously my opportunity to earn another four years in this job.”
Back in the days of Gov. Pete du Pont’s Republican administration, his aides had an expression — O.B.E., overtaken by events. It is what just happened to Biden.
