Former Vice President Joe Biden, said to be mulling a presidential run in 2020, is flying into Helena Saturday to headline the Montana Democratic Party’s annual fundraising dinner.
Biden, vice president under President Barack Obama, will address the Mansfield-Metcalf Dinner at the Lewis and Clark County Fairgrounds. About 1,300 people will attend the affair, which sold out within hours of the announcement that Biden would be the speaker, party officials told MTN News.
Biden is flying in from Chicago, where he is scheduled to give a speech Friday night at Northwestern University on “middle-class issues and geographic inequality.”
The website Politico reported Friday that Biden, 75, has been talking with “a tight circle of aides” about whether he should run for president in 2020 and various strategies should he make the decision.
Yet Politico also said Biden is “far from making any decision” about 2020 and has been spending his time traveling the country to Democratic Party events, to help local Democrats win in 2018 elections.
He campaigned earlier this week for Democrat Conor Lamb, a Democrat running in a special U.S. House race in Biden’s native Pennsylvania, and is scheduled to be the keynote speaker next Saturday at a North Dakota Democratic Party event.
While in Helena, Biden also is scheduled to attend a private event Saturday for U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who’s running for a third consecutive term.
Tester, one of several incumbent Senate Democrats running in states where President Trump won big in 2016, is expecting a tough re-election race this year.
Tester also will speak at the Mansfield-Metcalf event, as Gov. Steve Bullock and the five Democrats vying for the nomination to take on U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., this year.
