Jill Biden takes initiative in White House and on campaign trail
washington — First lady Jill Biden is supporting her husband, President Joe Biden, as he tries to salvage his reelection campaign after a debate performance left a growing number of members of his own party questioning his decision to stay in the race.
“She’s his biggest supporter and champion, because she believes in him, and she fears for the future of our country if it goes the other way,” Elizabeth Alexander, the first lady's communications director, said this week. “Just as he’s always supported her career, she supports his.”
Jill Biden has been campaigning with her husband this week but also on her own at several stops.
“For all the talk out there about this race, Joe has made it clear that he’s all in,” she said at each of her solo campaign stops.
“That’s the decision he’s made. And just as he has always supported my career, I am all in, too. I know you are, too, or you wouldn’t be here today,” she told crowds in North Carolina, Florida and Georgia.
As first lady, Jill Biden has spearheaded initiatives for military members and their families as well as cancer treatment. As a longtime teacher, she also prioritized programs focused on education.
She has been involved in Joining Forces, a White House designed initiative to support military and veteran families, caregivers and survivors, according to the White House website. Joining Forces focuses on projects such as improving military spouse employment and military child education. In her first two years as first lady, Biden visited 24 military installations.
She has also been a part of Cancer Moonshot, a program rejuvenated by the Bidens. According to its website, the project is committed to “ending cancer as we know it” by preventing more than 4 million cancer deaths by 2047. According to the American Cancer Society, a little more than 600,000 people died of cancer in 2021.
The goals of Cancer Moonshot include increasing access to screenings and avoiding harmful environmental exposures.
In addition to being the U.S. first lady, Biden is also an educator. Part of her focus while in the White House has been on academic initiatives aimed at recruiting and retaining teachers and lowering education costs.
When Joe Biden became vice president under President Barack Obama, Jill Biden became the first-ever second lady to hold a paying job outside the White House. As first lady she has continued to teach writing at Northern Virginia Community College, just south of Washington, where she taught full time while her husband was vice president.
“Many of my students don’t know that I have two jobs,” she said in 2021.
Biden is very familiar with life in Washington, since her husband spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate and eight years as vice president under Obama.
Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory gave Jill Biden the distinction of being the first presidential spouse to have earned a doctorate.
Dr. Biden, 73, was born in New Jersey and grew up in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia. She earned her doctorate in education from the University of Delaware.
Life with Joe Biden was complicated from the start. She was going through a divorce. He was grieving, raising two young sons alone after his wife and baby daughter died in a car crash. Jill and Joe married, after Joe asked five times.
“And the fifth time, I finally said to her, 'Jill, my Irish pride has gotten ahold of me. This is the last time I'm gonna ask you,” Biden said on the “Rachael Ray Show.” “I said, ‘You don't have to tell me when you will marry me, just if you'll marry me.’ She said yes.”
Four years later, Jill gave birth to a daughter, Ashley. Tragedy would strike again in 2015 when Joe Biden’s 46-year-old son, Beau, died of brain cancer.
“This is personal for me and my husband Joe,” she said.
She was the author of the 2020 children’s book Joey: The Story of Joe Biden. It was about her husband’s early years, his competitiveness and resilience after being mocked over his stutter.
She displayed that protective streak during a campaign rally in March 2023, using her body on two occasions to block a protester from reaching her husband on stage.
Although they call the tiny Mid-Atlantic state of Delaware their home, Jill Biden has followed her husband through his career as U.S. senator, vice president and president. Now, she hopes to see him in the White House for another four years.