Who is Jill Biden, the future First Lady of the United States?
At 69, she becomes the 46th First Lady of the United States after the election of her husband, Democratic candidate Joe Biden. First support of her husband, she will be particularly keen to defend the public school during the four years to come.
Like her husband, Jill Biden enters the White House. Or rather, she finds her, four years after having left her as the vice-president's wife. After Joe Biden's victory against Donald Trump on Saturday, November 7, this teacher now intends to use her status to carry her battles in the field of education. Franceinfo presents the new First Lady of the United States.
Almost unknown in France under the vice-presidency of Joe Biden, this daughter of a bank employee of Italian origin (whose last name, Giacoppa, had been anglicized in Jacobs by her father) and of a wife of household of English and Scottish origin becomes one of the leading figures of the American political scene. The eldest of five daughters, Jill Tracy Jacobs was born in 1951 in New Jersey and raised in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. It was during her first marriage in 1970 that she moved to Delaware and enrolled in college there. Her marriage ended in divorce four years later.
She met Senator Joe Robinette Biden in 1975 when she was in her final year of studying to become a teacher. Joe Biden is then a widower of 33 years, father of two children. They are matched by Joe's brother Frank, who studies at the University of Delaware, with the 24-year-old.
"How did you get this number?" are the first words she addresses to Joe Biden, when he calls her to ask for a date, a movie session in Philadelphia. At the end of this evening, before leaving, he shakes her hand. "I told my mother that I had finally met a gentleman," revealed the new First Lady in an interview with Vogue * in 2016.
She quickly becomes very close to Joe's two sons, Beau and Hunter. She refused five marriage proposals from Joe Biden before eventually marrying him in 1977: "It wasn't just a question of love. I got along so well with the boys, I wanted to be sure that it was 'was forever,' she argues in a 2020 campaign clip *. The Biden couple have a daughter, Ashley, born in 1981.
Jill Biden quickly got involved alongside her husband for his senatorial campaigns, then during the Democratic primaries (in 1988 and 2008). She also campaigned for Joe Biden's eldest son Beau, who was elected in 2006 and 2010 as Delaware's attorney general. "Originally, she was not at all from this environment. When she met Joe Biden, she took it all in hand", certifies Nicole Bacharan, Franco-American political scientist and author with Dominique Simonnet of First Ladies (ed. Tempus, 2020).
A victim of brain cancer, Beau Biden died in 2015, a particularly painful ordeal for Joe and Jill Biden. This practicing Catholic "even confided to having lost the faith", reports Nicole Bacharan. The 2020 electoral campaign was therefore a way of "regaining momentum but also of being faithful to the will of Beau, who dreamed of seeing his father in the White House", adds the political scientist.
Teacher above all
In the 1980s, when Joe Biden was a senator, based in Washington, she stayed in Wilmington, Delaware with the three children and continued to practice as an English teacher. "I never wanted to have to ask Joe if I could get $ 100 for this or that. I think it's important for every woman to have her money and be independent," she told CBS. * in 2009.
It was therefore quite natural that she wanted to continue working when Joe Biden became vice-president of Barack Obama in 2008. A remarkable first in American history. She practiced at Northern Virginia Community College, a public institution of higher education. He even happened to correct copies on board the plane of the vice president, Air Force Two. "She is a passionate teacher, she has worked a lot with children in difficulty. Most of the students did not know who she was, the bodyguards must have been forgotten," said Nicole Bacharan.
Now First Lady, she does not intend to stop teaching: "I want people to have esteem for teachers, that we highlight this profession", she declared in August to the channel American CNN *. “Teaching isn't what she does. It's who she is,” Joe Biden said of her.
Holder since 2007 of a doctorate in education, she chose to appear on Twitter as "Dr. Biden" to recall the professional title which she obtained. In an interview with the NPR * in 2013, she also explained that she did not consider herself a "Second Lady": "I see that as two separate roles and I prefer to be Dr. Biden, an English teacher."
Jill Biden is also dedicated to community causes. In 1993, she created an association to promote breast cancer screening, the Biden Breast Health Initiative. During her husband's vice-presidency, she runs programs for military families to support their spouses and children, as well as soldiers suffering from trauma upon returning from combat. Commitments that allowed him to make himself known to Americans.
Invested in Joe Biden's campaign
It is also as a teacher that she criticized the management of school structures by Donald Trump during the health crisis. "He didn't have a plan to reopen schools. I don't think Betsy DeVos [Secretary of State for Education] has any interest in public schools. Joe Biden wants to donate money to schools, so that every child has access to the Internet, "she testified on CNN * on September 1. "Even if the pandemic will remain the priority for Joe Biden, the couple remains very committed to the issue of public education," approves Nicole Bacharan. It was Donald Trump's tenure that prompted Jill Biden to get personally involved in her husband's campaign, taking a year's leave to campaign alongside him.
"I want a new president. I want change."
For Nicole Bacharan, impossible to split the elected president and his wife in this political adventure: "She is one of the wives of candidates that the advisers are obliged to include in the main decisions." Thus, in 2004, when Joe Biden was approached to run for the Democratic primary, he organized a meeting at his home with advisers. Jill Biden is then by the swimming pool of the family home, in a swimsuit. "I went to see them and I wrote 'NO' in the marker on my stomach. They understood," she admits in her memoir, published in 2019.
Fully invested in the 2020 campaign, she notably participated in meetings in Pennsylvania, where she grew up. In this key state, she encouraged women to mobilize: "You women will decide the future of this state. It could determine the outcome of the entire election." She was also the one who, in March, intervened to defend her husband when vegan activists burst on stage to attack him during a meeting.
