page_title: Jill Biden
section_title: Role in 2020 presidential campaign
hierarchical_section_title: Jill Biden / Role in 2020 presidential campaign
caption_attribution_description: Former Second Lady of the United States Jill Biden at the Des Moines Register's Political Soapbox at the 2019 Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa. Please attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere.
context_page_description: Jill Tracy Jacobs Biden is an American educator who was second lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is married to Joe Biden, the 47th vice president of the United States, and the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2020 election.
  Born in Hammonton, New Jersey, she grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Biden married Joe Biden in 1977, becoming stepmother to his two young sons from his first marriage, Beau and Hunter, whose mother and baby sister died in a car accident in 1972. Joe and Jill Biden have a daughter, Ashley, born in 1981.
  Biden has a bachelor's degree from the University of Delaware, master's degrees from West Chester University and Villanova University, and a doctoral degree from the University of Delaware. She taught English and reading in high schools for thirteen years, and also taught adolescents with emotional disabilities at a psychiatric hospital. From 1993 to 2008, she was an English and writing instructor at Delaware Technical & Community College.
context_section_description: Regarding the much-discussed possibility of her husband running in the 2020 United States presidential election, Biden was a key participant in his decision-making process.  By one report in March 2019, she was "enthusiastically" in favor of his running.
  The Joe Biden presidential campaign, 2020 was officially announced on April 25, 2019.  A Town and Country magazine headline declared that "Jill Biden Might Just Be Joe Biden's Greatest Political Asset".
  Days later, Biden addressed the matter of women who had accused her husband of inappropriate physical contact that had made them feel uncomfortable by saying, "I think what you don't realize is how many people approach Joe. Men and women, looking for comfort or empathy. But going forward, I think he's gonna have to judge – be a better judge – of when people approach him, how he's going to react. That he maybe shouldn't approach them."  She said she had experienced male intrusion on personal space herself in the past and that "I just sorta stepped aside. I didn't address it. ... things have changed. There was a time when women were afraid to speak out. I can remember specifically it was in a job interview ... if that same thing happened today, I'd turn around and say, 'What do you think you're doin'?' ... it's totally different."  She also attracted attention by saying that "It's time to move on" with respect to her husband's role in 1991 regarding Anita Hill and the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination.
  Biden continued to teach at NOVA during 2019, at one point telling a reporter, "I'm here grading research papers in between interviews."   She staged appearances without her husband in early contest states such as Iowa, in some cases accompanied by a granddaughter.  She attracted notice during one campaign stop in New Hampshire when she emphasized the electability argument in favor of her husband, saying, "you know, your candidate might be better on, I don't know, health care, than Joe is, but you've got to look at who's going to win this election, and maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, 'OK, I personally like so-and-so better,' but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump." 
  Once Hunter Biden became a figure in the scandal related to the Ukraine that led to a presidential impeachment, she was adamant about defending him: "Hunter did nothing wrong. And that's the bottom line."  The strain of the subsequent impeachment trial was enough that it fractured a friendship she had with South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who repeatedly called for Hunter Biden to be questioned as a witness at the trial.
  Biden played a more active role in this presidential campaign than she had in her husband' two prior ones, and for the first time, Biden reluctantly took a leave of absence from NOVA for the spring 2020 semester, so that she could be on the campaign trail full-time. She did take training in online teaching once the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States struck, and she has indicated that she intends to resume teaching at NOVA even if her husband is elected. If that were to happen, she would become the first First Lady to have a paying job outside the White House.
  In the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses, she sometimes staged more campaign appearances in that state than her husband did. She gave out her campaign e-mail address to voters in case they wanted to ask her follow-up questions. In joint appearances she sometimes spoke after he did, acting in the "closer" role. She gained some media attention during the March 3 Super Tuesday primaries when, during her husband's speech after experiencing a number of victories around the nation, she physically blocked a protester from getting at him.
  With her husband having become the presumptive Democratic nominee, in June 2020 she published the children's book Joey: The Story of Joe Biden, which portrayed him as having been "brave and adventurous" as a child despite having a stutter that he was bullied for.  In July 2020 she spoke out about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education, appearing in a v
caption: Biden at an August 2019 campaign event
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