Short-timer replaces Biden in Senate

WILMINGTON - Boxes marked "Biden" sat in the hallways, and stacks of framed photographs with dangling archival tags leaned against the wall in the 20th-floor office suite of Delaware's new U.S. senator last week.

The sense that Vice President Biden has not really left goes beyond the memorabilia, the familiar office telephone number, and the dozens of veteran staff members who've stayed on the job.

That's because his appointed successor, Sen. Ted Kaufman, 69, has been one of the vice president's tightest friends and advisers for nearly four decades.

"People keep asking me where I disagree with Biden, and I'm having a hard time finding something," Kaufman said in an interview. "The reason I went to work for him - and worked for him so long - is, I never met an elected official I agreed with as much as him, right back from the beginning."

But Kaufman said that if he clashes with the administration on some issue, he would enjoy the competitive challenge of besting Biden.

Both men share a Catholic, middle-class background and a liberal-center political bent. While Biden grew up in Scranton and Delaware, Kaufman is a Philadelphia native; he lived in Logan and West Mount Airy, and graduated from Central High School.

Another difference: Kaufman is low-key, befitting his background as an engineer, while Biden is famously loquacious.

Gov. Ruth Ann Minner announced her intention to appoint Kaufman a couple of weeks after the Nov. 4 election, catching many Delaware political players by surprise.

Speculation began immediately that Kaufman was appointed as a loyal placeholder for the vice president's oldest son, state Attorney General Joseph R. "Beau" Biden 3d, now in Iraq with his National Guard unit.

That's because Kaufman made it clear at the outset that he wasn't going to run next year in the special election to fill the last four years of the vice president's Senate term, calling it "part of my deal" with Minner, who left office in January. In making the choice, Minner passed over other politicians who were interested in running to keep the job.

Not surprisingly, Kaufman rejects the placeholder label.

"I don't understand it from the real facts," he said. "What I'm doing is guaranteeing that in 2010 anybody who wants to run . . . can run, and no one has the advantage of having been the incumbent. I am for an open election."

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