Beau Biden

Joseph Robinette "Beau" Biden III (born February 3, 1969) is an American attorney, Army JAG officer, and politician from Wilmington, Delaware. He serves as the Attorney General of Delaware and a major in the Delaware Army National Guard. He is a member of the Democratic Party and is also the older son of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

Early life and family
Biden was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the eldest son of former U.S. Senator and current Vice President Joe Biden, and his first wife, Neilia Hunter. His mother and younger sister, Naomi Christina Biden, were killed in an automobile accident in 1972, in which he and his brother Hunter were badly injured. He and his brother encouraged his father to remarry, and Jill Jacobs became Beau's stepmother in 1977. His half-sister Ashley was born in 1981.

He is a graduate of Archmere Academy, his father's high school alma mater, as well as the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity; and Syracuse University College of Law, as is his father. From 1995 to 2004, he worked at the United States Department of Justice in Philadelphia, first as Counsel to the Office of Policy Development and later as a Federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office. In 2004, he became a partner in the Wilmington law firm Bifferato, Gentilotti, Biden & Balick.

He and his wife, Hallie, have two children: a daughter, Natalie, and a son, Hunter.

At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, after Joe Biden was nominated for Vice President of the United States, Beau introduced his father. He recounted the auto accident that killed his mother and sister and the subsequent parenting commitment his father made to his sons, a speech at which many delegates wept.

Military service
Biden joined the military in 2003 as a member of the Delaware Army National Guard and was recently promoted to the rank of Major in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps as part of the 261st Signal Brigade in Smyrna, Delaware.

Biden's unit was activated to deploy to Iraq on October 3, 2008, and sent to Fort Bliss, Texas, for pre-deployment training, the day after his father participated in the 2008 presidential campaign's only vice presidential debate. His father is on the record as saying, "I don't want him going. But I tell you what, I don't want my grandson or my granddaughters going back in 15 years, and so how we leave makes a big difference."

Biden traveled to Washington, D.C., from Iraq in January 2009 for the presidential inauguration and his father's swearing-in as Vice President, then returned to Iraq. Biden received a visit at Camp Victory from his father on July 4, 2009. Biden returned from Iraq in September 2009, his yearlong deployment complete. Biden had announced that during his deployment he would continue to actively serve as Delaware's Attorney General by working in conjunction with his office's senior staff in Delaware, although a member of his unit related Biden saying he had turned over most of his attorney general work to his deputy so as to focus on his duties in Iraq.

Political career
In his first bid at political office, Biden ran for Attorney General of Delaware in 2006. Biden's opponent was a veteran state prosecutor and Assistant U.S. Attorney, Ferris Wharton. Major issues in the campaign included the candidates' experience and proposed efforts to address sex offenders, Internet predators, senior abuse, and domestic abuse. Biden won the election by approximately five percentage points.

After being elected, he appointed former Delaware Attorney General and International Judge Richard S. Gebelein as Chief Deputy Attorney General, and former assistant U.S. Attorney Richard G. Andrews was appointed as State Prosecutor. As Attorney General, Biden has supported and enforced stronger registration requirements for sex offenders.

Joe Biden's election as Vice President in the 2008 presidential election left a vacancy in the U.S. Senate upon the time he would resign his seat. Beau was once believed to have been a frontrunner for the seat, but, while deployed in Iraq, stated that he would not seek or accept an appointment to the Senate.

On November 24, 2008, Governor Ruth Ann Minner named Ted Kaufman to the seat, but Kaufman indicated he would not be a candidate in the 2010 special election. This fueled speculation Beau would run at that time. Biden's father stated after the announcement of Kaufman's appointment, "It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General, would make a great United States Senator just as I believe he has been a great attorney general. But Beau has made it clear from the moment he entered public life that any office he sought he would earn on his own ... [I]f he chooses to run for the Senate in the future, he will have to run and win on his own. He wouldn't have it any other way." In October 2009, Biden stated that he was considering a run for the Senate and that he would make a final decision in January. On January 25, Biden confirmed that he would forgo a Senate run so as to better focus on the prosecution of Earl Bradley, an infamous pedophilia suspect.

On November 2, 2010, he was easily reelected to a second term as Delaware Attorney General, beating Independent Party of Delaware candidate Doug Campbell by a huge margin. He is the first person to have held an elected office while his father was in office as Vice-President.

Health concerns
On May 11, 2010, Biden was admitted to Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware, for what doctors described as a "mild stroke".

In August 2013, he was admitted to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center at the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas. On August 14, 2013, Biden reported feeling weak and disoriented during a family vacation in Indiana. MD Anderson will be conducting tests, among them a biopsy.