A smiling Biden was met with a standing ovation and “we love you, Joe” at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 103 in Dorchester as photographers clicked by. Some union members wore “IBEW FOR JOE” T-shirts. On a table near the door lay a plastic bag full of buttons with Biden’s name on them.
“What you’re actually doing makes a huge difference,” Biden told the room. “We need that 51st vote.”
The IBEW provided a favorable field for Biden. It’s a few blocks from Labor Secretary Marty Walsh’s home in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. The union hosted Vice President Kamala Harris for an abortion-access roundtable in August. Local 103 business manager Lou Antonellis told reporters that “the president has established himself as the most pro-labor, pro-worker president in the history of the United States.” He refused to answer questions asked by the President about how the rail strike was being handled.
While Biden enjoyed the glow of IBEW’s goodwill, the phone bank was relatively brief for Warnock. The members started calling about 45 minutes before the Speaker entered the room. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who was joined by fellow Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, could be heard speaking to someone who said they were in New York. The press was ushered out of the ceremony room after the President took a few selfies and made a few calls. Minutes after they left, several dialers picked up leftover pizza boxes and headed for the door.
Biden made up for it at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fundraiser – the root of his return to Massachusetts less than a week after he left Nantucket – with Warren and Markey at a private residence in Boston’s expensive Beacon Hill neighborhood where He reiterated the requirement. For Democrats to gain the upper hand in the Senate which is currently split 50-50.
Biden has no plans to visit Georgia before Tuesday. Instead, by campaigning for Warnock nearly 1,000 miles away, the president is continuing his successful midterm strategy of helping from afar. Biden aides told The Associated Press that Warnock’s campaign requested the trip to Boston. And deep-pocketed Massachusetts is as good a place as any to help refill Senate Democrats’ campaign coffers by pouring millions into Warnock’s runoff election against Republican Herschelle Walker.
Yet Biden attracted most attention Friday for his meeting with the Prince of Wales at the John F. Kennedy Library, in which the two took in a “spectacular” skyline view and shared “warm memories” of the late Queen Elizabeth. Second, according to the pool report.
The two also share an affinity for the late President. The British royals were concluding a three-day tour of Boston on Friday that culminated in their Earthshot Climate Innovator Prize Awards — an initiative named after Kennedy’s famous “moonshot” speech. Biden commented on his administration’s similarly named Cancer Moonshot initiative during a visit to the library in September.