Biden is weird

Joe Biden likes to say he is the embodiment of the American dream -- a middle-class kid who became one of the U.S. Senate's most-respected members and, now, the Democratic nominee for vice president.
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Though he's considered one of the least wealthy senators -- his net worth dwarfed by several multimillionaire attorneys and entrepreneurs -- Biden is a wealthy man by ordinary standards -- worth about $2 million but perhaps hundreds of thousand dollars more, a News Journal analysis found.

Like many Americans, Biden's house is his most valuable asset.

First elected to the Senate 36 years ago, the former lawyer lives off Barley Mill Road in Greenville -- northern Delaware's priciest area -- on a four-acre lakefront estate in a 7,000-square-foot custom home. Biden also owns a smaller carriage house on his property, where his widowed mother lives.

Local real estate agents said the Biden property is worth at least $2.5 million -- $1.8 million more than the couple owes. In addition, his latest Senate financial disclosure -- which lists assets and liabilities in wide ranges -- shows that Biden's net worth, excluding real estate holdings and mortgage debt, is between $381,000 and minus $55,000.

Biden and his wife, Jill, an English instructor at Delaware Technical & Community College, have combined salaries of $265,500 this year. Between 2005 and 2007, Biden also received a total of $225,000 in advances for his autobiography, "Promises to Keep."

While their earnings probably would not be enough to purchase their Greenville estate today, the Bidens have managed to live in such splendor partly because of two financially rewarding real estate deals with political supporters.

In 1996, Biden sold a home in Greenville for the asking price of $1.2 million -- more than six times what he paid two decades earlier -- to John R. Cochran III, a top executive at the MBNA credit card bank that was a longtime political benefactor.
The News Journal