Biden to Address Key Union as Decision on 2020 Campaign Nears

(Bloomberg) -- Former Vice President Joe Biden will speak to a key labor ally in Washington on Tuesday as he nears a decision on whether to join a crowded Democratic field for what would be his third run for president.

Biden will address a meeting of the International Association of Fire Fighters, a group that has long supported him and signaled it will back him if he runs in 2020. The union’s 316,000 members lean Republican but its leadership has typically endorsed Democratic candidates and believes its members would largely rally behind Biden.

The former Delaware senator and vice president to Barack Obama appears poised to enter the race unless he has a last-minute change of heart, according to people who have spoken with him in recent weeks. He would enter as a frontrunner, though it’s unclear whether he’d be able to maintain that advantage on the campaign trail.

"He’s going through this strategic process to consider everything that one has to consider to make the decision," said IAFF president Harold Schaitberger, who last spoke with Biden just over a week ago. "If he pulls the trigger to run, so will we," he said of an endorsement for Biden.

Biden ran in 1988 and 2008 and considered another White House bid for the 2016 nomination but opted against running after the death of his son Beau.

Biden is expected to wait until early April to announce so that he’ll have nearly three full months to raise money before filing his first quarterly fundraising disclosure. The next public event on his schedule is the Delaware Democratic Party’s dinner on Saturday in Dover.

At 76, Biden is four years older than President Donald Trump and one year younger than the oldest current candidate for the Democratic nomination: 77-year-old Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Biden was first sworn into the Senate in 1973, leaving him with a lengthy record of votes and public statements that do not all align with his current positions, including his advocacy in the 1990s for mass incarceration. He’s faced criticism from Democratic activists for praising Republicans, including Vice President Mike Pence, whom he described as a “decent guy” before walking back that statement.

Biden leads in most national and early-primary state polls, though name recognition is often a key driver of results during this phase of the election cycle. He was the leading candidate with 27 percent support from likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers in a Des Moines Register poll released Saturday.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who entered the race last month, came in second with the backing of 25 percent of those surveyed. Every other declared or likely candidate drew the support of fewer than 10 percent of those surveyed. The poll was conducted March 3-6 and has a 4.9 percentage point margin of error.

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