Former Vice President Joe Biden paid Democratic congressional candidate Conor Lamb the ultimate compliment Tuesday: “He reminds me of my son Beau,” Mr. Biden said, referring to the Delaware attorney general who died of cancer in 2015.
“He reminds me of my Beau because with Beau and with Conor, it’s about the other guy,” Mr. Biden said in remarks in a crowded Collier union hall Tuesday afternoon and again in an evening appearance before several hundred people in a ballroom at Robert Morris University in Moon.
Mr. Lamb, 33, is running in a special election Tuesday against Republican Rick Saccone to represent the 18th Congressional District seat vacated by Tim Murphy. Like the late Beau Biden, Mr. Lamb is a former military lawyer with a family legacy in politics: His grandfather was a Democratic leader in the state Legislature. Or as Mr. Biden put it, “Public service is in his blood. It’s all he’s done; think about it.”
Much of Mr. Biden’s two stump speeches were the same, but the audiences were different. In his afternoon appearance at the Carpenters Training Center, Mr. Biden spoke to a group that was mostly male and skewed older. In RMU’s Yorktown Hall, the capacity crowd was made up of more women and young people.
The message, however, was consistent.
“This is a son of southwestern Pennsylvania,” said the former vice president and longtime senator from Delaware. “He believes in hard work, he believes in labor. He’s not afraid to say the word ‘union.’”
Mr. Lamb “will never ever stop, will never ever play a game,” Mr. Biden said. “That’s this guy. This guy gets it.”
Mr. Biden urged his audiences to think of the 18th District race in broader terms, warning that a late 2017 tax cut passed by Republicans would lead to trillion-dollar deficits. Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, he said, had “already announced” that he hoped to cover those budget holes by cutting Social Security and Medicare. Mr. Lamb, he said, “will throw himself in front of a train to prevent that from happening.”
Mr. Lamb welcomed Mr. Biden’s support, introducing him in the afternoon session by saying, “I don’t think there’s another person in public life today who knows in his bones the struggles” of workers.
“We live in a time where everybody’s so divided that I am happy to stand here today with a leader that everybody likes,” Mr. Lamb said.
The National Republican Campaign Committee, which is backing Mr. Saccone’s efforts, dismissed the events as further proof that Mr. Lamb was not the moderate he claimed to be.
“Today Conor Lamb will further align himself with his liberal supporters by campaigning with Joe Biden,” said an NRCC statement.
Mr. Biden also commented on the avalanche of political ads in the race, the cost of which he put at $10 million.
“Conor has withstood one of the biggest barrages of negative campaign advertising” in the history of congressional races, Mr. Biden said. “Before this is over, Republicans might have been able to pay for their entire tax cuts” by using the ad money that way instead.
“Why are they so afraid of him? ... Do you think they’re spending all this money ... because they’re fearful he’s going to hurt the middle class? Do you think they give a damn about that?”
He also praised the campaign’s grassroots energy.
“There’s no stopping this campaign,” Mr. Biden said. “You all are proving one of the oldest rules in politics: passion and commitment rules in politics. … It will beat big money every time.”
Though polls have shown the race to be a tight one, Mr. Biden exuded enthusiasm.
“We can do this thing standing on our head,” he concluded of the prospects for victory. “This is the guy to help lead us to a future you are going to love.”
First Published: March 6, 2018, 11:01 p.m.
