The sister and campaign manager of President Joe Biden visited Little Rock on Tuesday. Valerie Biden Owens spoke to members of the Political Animals Club and Rotary Club about her memoir, “Growing Up Biden.”
The book details what she described as a middle-class family in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It includes the highs and lows of the Bidens, she said, so that readers can reflect on their own families.
Owens also discussed being one of the first women to manage a presidential campaign. In 1972, Owens helped her brother win his first U.S Senate race in Delaware. While serving in the Senate, Biden’s wife and daughter died in a car accident. She said her brother thought about ending his political career to take care of his sons Beau and Hunter. Owens said she helped raise the two which helped her brother continue his political career.
After the event, Owens was not available to talk with reporters.
A poll by Talk Business & Politics earlier this year found President Biden with an approval rating in Arkansas of about 37%. Former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, a Democrat who served in the 1990s, says one of the possible reasons for Biden’s low approval rating in the state is party divisions and the filibuster in Congress.
“You’ve got Joe Manchin, the senator from West Virginia, who says he’s looking out for the coal interests when he votes against ending the filibuster on all kinds of very important legislation that feeds people, takes care of farmers and everything else here in Arkansas,” Tucker said in an interview.
He says the filibuster often gets in the way of passing legislation that a majority of Americans want. Tucker, who also represented Arkansas’ 2nd Congressional District, said the lack of a filibuster when he was in the House kept one member from stalling votes on key pieces of legislation.
