WILMINGTON, Del. In the twilight of his career, Edward E. Kaufman has returned to Washington.
In 1976, Mr. Kaufman began 19 years as chief of staff to Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware. He left to become a campaign consultant and a member of the federal Broadcasting Board of Governors, and to continue teaching Duke University law students about Congress.
Now, at age 69, he is back as a newly minted Democratic senator, formally appointed on Jan. 15 by the departing governor, Ruth Ann Minner, to fill the seat vacated by Vice President Biden.
Ms. Minner’s decision, announced less than three weeks after the Nov. 4 election, occurred in an atmosphere serene compared with that surrounding the Senate appointments of Roland W. Burris in Illinois and Kirsten E. Gillibrand in New York.
Still, her choice of Mr. Kaufman, whom everybody calls Ted, took the state by surprise, including the appointee himself, who has never run for office. His hometown newspaper misspelled his name, the public asked “Ted who?” and Mr. Kaufman had just rented a Florida condominium where he and his wife, Lynne, were planning to spend the winter.
Ms. Minner said in an interview that she felt Mr. Kaufman was well prepared for the job.
“He had followed the war, followed what Joe had done and could go to work without any learning curve at all,” she said, adding that she had spoken to two or three other prospective appointees. She took herself out of the running, she said, because at age 74 and after a long career, “I didn’t want to commute, and I didn’t want to work.”
For all of that, Democrats were particularly stunned that Ms. Minner bypassed John C. Carney Jr., her lieutenant governor in each of her two four-year terms, and there was widespread speculation that Mr. Kaufman’s appointment had largely to do with Mr. Biden’s ambitions for his oldest son, State Attorney General Joseph R. Biden III, who, the father has said, “would make a great United States senator.”
Mr. Kaufman has made clear that he will not run next year in an election to fill the last four years of what would have been the seventh term for Senator Biden, who ran simultaneously in 2008 for both re-election and the vice presidency. Mr. Kaufman’s appointment, and his absence from next year’s field, mean the younger Mr. Biden, now fulfilling a commitment with his National Guard unit in Iraq, will not need to face an incumbent if he seeks the seat.
That has prompted headlines like “Placeholder Senator: Ted Kaufman, D-Biden” (The Nation) and “Was Biden’s replacement pick made to help his son get elected?” (Politico).
Mr. Kaufman resents being called a placeholder.
“I don’t get it,” he said in an interview. “It’s the opposite. I’m going to fill the seat for two years, and anybody that wants to run in 2010 can run. So how am I a placeholder? The people of Delaware should pick the person they want, and they will do that in 2010 because Governor Minner selected me and I’m not going to run then.”
The younger Mr. Biden himself, known as Beau, has said he intends to run for re-election as attorney general next year. But not everyone is convinced. “I give you my word,” Mr. Kaufman said, “I don’t have any idea what he’ll do.”
The tenure of Beau Biden’s father was the 14th-longest in Senate history; Mr. Kaufman’s will be one of the shortest. But barely two weeks into his job, the new lawmaker can scarcely contain his enthusiasm. His staff is in place, and 80 percent of its members are Biden veterans he has known for years. He is on the Foreign Relations and Judiciary Committees, his first choices and those he knows best.
He has echoed the Obama-Biden call for immediate action on the economic stimulus package and for financing “shovel-ready” projects to repair roads, bridges and schools.
“Everyone I’ve talked to, from liberal to conservative, says this is what we’ve got to do,” he said. “Put money in people’s hands.”
His decisions, he said, will reflect Mr. Biden’s views, the needs of the people of Delaware and his own principles.
“My guiding principle is not going to be the number of bills passed or my name on a whole bunch of legislation,” Mr. Kaufman said, adding that “there is no limit to what you can do if you don’t have to get the credit.”
“I will work with senior senators,” he said, “help others move forward, make sure there is enough money to do what has to be done.”
In a Senate dominated by lawyers and career public servants, Mr. Kaufman, who holds an undergraduate degree from Duke and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School, is one of only two engineers. (The other is Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island.)
What he calls his “humanistic” way of thinking he attributes largely to his Irish Catholic mother, a teacher, and his father, a secular Jew, a social worker and his hero.
He and his three sisters were raised in Philadelphia as Catholics. After attending Mass on Sundays with their mother, they would return home to eat bagels and lox with their father and engage in wide-ranging discussions.
“I knew the world was changing,” he recalled with a smile, “when non-Jewish friends began to say, ‘Let’s go out and get bagels and lox.’ ”