NEWARK, Del. — Vice President Joe Biden’s son was being treated at a Delaware hospital, the White House said today, though it did not provide information about what might be wrong.
Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden was awake and alert and communicating with his parents and wife, who were with him at Christiana Hospital in Newark.
Jason Miller, a spokesman for Beau Biden, said he was admitted to the hospital this morning.
The 41-year-old had considered running for the Senate seat his father held before becoming vice president, but decided against it. He became attorney general in 2007 and previously served at the U.S. Justice Department.
In 2009, the younger Biden returned from a yearlong deployment to Iraq with his Army National Guard unit. He was a captain and military lawyer in the 261st Theater Tactical Signal Brigade.
He announced in January that he would not run for Senate, saying he needed to remain focused as attorney general on a high-profile criminal scandal involving a pediatrician accused of sexually assaulting several patients. Prosecutors believe Dr. Earl Bradley, who was arrested in December, may have molested more than 100 children over the past decade.
Biden’s decision was a surprise, given that his father’s longtime confidant and former Senate chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, was appointed to the seat essentially to keep it warm for the son until this year’s election.
But longtime Republican Rep. Mike Castle, a two-term governor and one of the most successful politicians in Delaware history, entered the Senate race in October, dramatically increasing the likelihood of a fierce contest.
Beau Biden’s decision left the seat his father held for 36 years vulnerable.
The elder Biden was away from that seat for seven months in 1988 after undergoing surgery for brain aneurysms.
More than a decade earlier, in 1972, he lost his wife and infant daughter when a tractor-trailer broadsided their station wagon when they were out getting a Christmas tree. Beau and his brother Hunter were critically injured but recovered.
Beau Biden, who is married with two young children, has worked as an attorney in private practice. He also worked for the Justice Department between 1995 and 1997 and as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1997 to 2002.
He is the vice president’s oldest son.
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