Jonathan Starkey

The News Journal

Joe Biden recalled his days as a Delaware public defender during a private meeting with black clergy in South Carolina, saying he was "the only white boy on the East Side of Wilmington."

That's according to a CNN report on the closed-door meeting, during which he also reportedly called members of the Tea Party "crazy."

Biden met with the clergy members at Allen University in Columbia, S.C., before delivering public remarks there and attending a later private Democratic fundraiser.

Biden also talked to the ministers about what might happen if Republicans take control of the Senate in November. "If they win again, we are going to get no consensus on anything for the next two, four, six years," Biden said, according to a CNN source. "But if we beat some of these folks, it's going to give some spine to the Republicans who know better."

Biden has talked about his experience on Wilmington's East Side before.

During a presidential debate in 2007, Biden partly credited his summer job at a Prices Run swimming pool in 1962, as a 19-year-old, with his early interest in politics. "I worked in the African-American community, east side of my city, as the only white employee for a long while when I was a kid," Biden said during the debate.

He later left a corporate law job for work as a public defender after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. "I didn't think I could change the world in 1968, or even what was happening, but I thought I could make a difference," Biden wrote in his book, "Promises to Keep."

Contact Jonathan Starkey at (302) 983-6756, on Twitter @jwstarkey or at jstarkey@delawareonline.com.