Familiar Faces at Biden's Side

This time, Biden aides responded swiftly with mea culpas. "The hard part about being in the middle of a storm is reminding people that storms are temporary," Rasky said, 20 years after the Kinnock lesson. "They don't necessarily have to blow you away."

A Family Affair

When Biden decided to run for New Castle County Council in 1970, he asked his sister Valerie, a former University of Delaware homecoming queen, to manage his campaign. "We didn't know anyone in politics," she explained. "Also, I was the only one who took him seriously."

Two years later, when Biden launched a long-shot bid to unseat the popular GOP Sen. J. Caleb Boggs, he again put his family in charge: Valerie; his wife, Neilia; his parents; and his brothers Frankie and Jimmy. One of the few high-level outsiders was Kaufman, a DuPont Co. marketing official and the Democratic chairman of Biden's GOP-leaning council district.

Biden spent all day meeting voters, deferring to his sister on virtually everything else. Kaufman served as Biden's state party liaison and the architect of his voter turnout program. He also hired two people who would become Biden fixtures: Marttila and Caddell.

On Labor Day, Biden trailed by about 35 percentage points. On Election Day, he won 51 percent to 49 percent.

On Dec. 18, Neilia and 13-month-old Naomi Biden were killed in a car accident, and the couple's two toddler sons, Beau and Hunter, were seriously injured. Biden added a room to his house, and Valerie moved in until she married Jack Owens, Biden's best friend from law school, in 1975. Kaufman took a one-year leave of absence from DuPont and agreed to run the Senate office from Wilmington.

In those early days, as he battled crushing grief, Biden seriously considered giving up his Senate seat. But Valerie never believed he would quit. "I knew he was down," she said. "But he wasn't down for the count."

Running -- and Stumbling

From the very beginning, there was a buzz in Washington about Biden. His youth, gripping personal story and stem-winding speeches made him a favorite on the Democratic Party dinner circuit.

Biden and his team first discussed a White House run in early 1980. He decided he wasn't ready. The group gathered again four years later, this time for a more serious round of meetings. Paperwork for the New Hampshire primary was prepared, and a plane was reserved to take Biden to Concord. But at the last minute, the senator decided to pass.

He did give the gang, led by Kaufman, Marttila and Caddell, the go-ahead to prepare for 1988. Marttila arranged for Rasky to meet Biden in December 1986 at a John F. Kerry fundraiser. "It was sort of like love at first sight," recalled Rasky, who resigned his job as a cable television executive to become the campaign's communications director.

The most passionate believer of all was Caddell, who viewed Biden as a new-generation Democratic leader, inspirational but not particularly ideological, with a charisma that was lacking among other hopefuls.

Despite Biden's 15 years in the Senate, he remained cloaked in a beyond-the-Beltway innocence. He didn't mingle with the political establishment or kibitz with the national press corps. As soon as he was done voting, he caught the train home to Wilmington.