Beau Biden for governor?

It wasn't long ago that Beau Biden was considered a rising star of the national Democratic Party.

Biden, Delaware's former attorney general and Iraq War veteran, gave a well-received speech at the Democratic National Convention in September 2012 nominating his father, Joe Biden, for another four-year term as vice president.

He crisscrossed the country for the Obama campaign, helping generate support for the Democratic ticket among fellow veterans.

In early 2013, he made public pleas to tighten Delaware's gun control laws after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

That's all changed.

Biden has made very few public appearances and has not delivered public remarks in months. And he hasn't sat down with a member of the media for an extended interview since September 2013.

His schedule, obtained through open records requests with the Delaware Department of Justice, highlights political events but offers little insight on Biden's priorities during his final months as Delaware's top law enforcement official.

Biden's public absence coincides with questions about his health. After becoming disoriented on a family vacation in August 2013, Biden was flown to The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he underwent an operation to remove a small brain lesion.

In a statement last February, Biden's doctor said the former attorney general was given a "clean bill of health" in November 2013.

Last week, Biden was in the audience for his father's speech at a Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast in Wilmington, where the vice president talked about improving the relationship between police and black communities.

But the younger Biden, who aides insist is still plotting a run for governor in 2016, offered no comments of his own.

Likewise, through a spokesman, Biden declined requests to discuss his new job at Grant & Eisenofer, the Wilmington law firm managed by top Democratic donor Stuart Grant, or his plans to seek Delaware's highest office.

All of which leads to a couple questions: Will Biden run for governor in 2016, as he has indicated? And does he want to?

Delaware Sen. Greg Lavelle, a Sharpley Republican who is considering a campaign for governor in 2016, called Biden's absence "disrespectful" to voters.

Biden's retreat from the public has left him silent on significant criminal justice issues. During his final months as attorney general, Biden, who promised to take on Wilmington crime, did not speak publicly on a near-record homicide rate in Wilmington.

And he was silent amid protests and calls for policing reforms after police-involved killings in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, and the assasination of two officers in their squad car in Brooklyn, New York.

"It's very frustrating and I hear this from people, regular people, not political people," Lavelle said. "It frustrates the public to have a very public person running for a very public office and yet he isn't around. Even going back a couple years ago, he was very engaged."

Biden was first elected attorney general in 2006 and he served two four-year terms.

He has taken steps to prepare for a governor run. Biden formed a campaign committee for the governor's race in 2016, and had $655,000 in the bank on Dec. 31, acccording to finance documents filed last week.

Running Biden's political operation is Josh Alcorn, who worked as a regional field director for Joe Biden's presidential campaign in 2008 and as finance director to former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat.

But he's not making any of the public pronouncements many expect from a declared candidate for governor.

"If he's a reluctant warrior in a sense, you'd have to learn to overcome that," said John Flaherty, the president of the Delaware Coalition for Open Government who worked for 16 years as a Delaware-based aide to then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden.

Flaherty said Beau's style contrasts sharply with his father's, who is known to relish the spotlight and who Flaherty remembers holding town halls up and down the state and directly answering scores of questions from voters.

Other top-tier Delaware politicians, including Gov. Jack Markell and U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, both keep robust public schedules talking directly to Delawareans.

"You can't just keep having prepared statements. People deserve to see you, especially in a small state like Delaware," Flaherty said of Biden. "I can't believe anyone would want to run for governor and be so reticent about talking to people."

Biden will have a record from his time as attorney general to run on, if he decides on a 2016 campaign: during his tenure, the Department of Justice secured $185 million from financial institutions in settlements related to the 2008 financial crisis.

His successor, Attorney General Matt Denn, has proposed using some of that money to fund walking police patrols in Wilmington, affordable housing and teachers in low-income schools.

Biden established a Child Predator Task Force that led to the conviction of 214 people on crimes related to child sexual abuse. He took leading roles on bullying and gun control, created a Family Division to focus on cases involving children and families and backed legislation allowing citizens to appeal open government decisions to his office.

His record on crime, however, is mixed at best: Wilmington homicides spiked during Biden's final months in office, with 28 homicides recorded in the city last year. That's short only of the 29 homicides recorded in 2010, also during Biden's tenure.

Wilmington Mayor Dennis P. Williams said Biden did engage in the complicated task of coordinating responses to the rising rate of gun crime in Wilmington.

Williams said he met with Biden as recently as October in the mayor's city office.

"Me and him probably had six or seven meetings over here in my office last year," Williams said last week. "He wasn't a prima donna, he was a guy who would come out in his office. He walked over here quite a bit. I know he was engaged."

Biden is already having a real effect on the 2016 race, with other top Democrats delaying decisions about a campaign while they await his next move. Other potential Democratic candidates include Denn, New Castle County Executive Tom Gordon and Congressman John Carney.

In an interview with Channel 2's Larry Mendte earlier this month, Carney opened the door to a 2016 campaign. But Carney made it clear he would be interested only in a race that did not include a Democratic primary against Biden.

Carney, a former two-term lieutenant governor, ran for Delaware's top office in 2008, losing a primary to Gov. Jack Markell.

"Look, I'm really satisfied with the work that I'm doing here in the U.S. Congress. I just was re-elected to another term. I'm going to put all my energies into that. One thing I do know, having run for governor once before, it's not something I need to do," Carney said, before Mendte asked him about a Democratic field that did not include Biden.

"I'd be much interested if Beau Biden decides not to run," Carney said.

In an interview, Markell said he was not surprised by Biden's move to the private sector earlier this month. And he said the former attorney general should be afforded privacy as he plots his next political move.

Biden should not be expected to be fully engaged politically almost two years from Election Day 2016, Markell said.

"People want to be gainfully employed, people want to make a living," Markell said during an interview in his Legislative Hall office this month. "There are two years to go. I would have been very surprised if he hadn't gone out and found employment. Stuart Grant and that whole firm is recognized as a very good law firm serving clients across a range of states.

"Beau is a private citizen and he is absolutely entitled to go make a living, provide for his family," Markell said.

Biden's new job at Grant & Eisenhofer could come with political baggage.

While Biden was attorney general, the Delaware Department of Justice joined a whistleblower case brought by Grant that could result in millions for the attorney general's new firm. The whistleblower could receive a quarter of any recovery under Delaware's false claims laws.

Grant brought the case in June 2013, claiming more than a dozen Delaware corporations schemed to withhold "hundreds of millions" of abandoned property due the state in the form of unredeemed gift card balances.

Corporate defendants include Netflix, California Pizza Kitchen, Overstock.com, Skechers, Shell Oil and the National Restaurant Association. Grant said it was "advantageous" for Biden's office to join the case, but says suggestion that Biden acted inappropriately, or was rewarded with a job at Grant's firm, is misleading and inaccurate.

"We could have done very well with or without the state," Grant said.

A spokesman for Biden last year said the attorney general recused himself from review of the case because of his relationship with Grant.

Delaware Sen. Colin Bonini, a Dover Republican and declared candidate for governor in 2016, questioned Biden's relationship with the firm and his recusal.

"If you run a state agency that does business with someone and as soon as you leave that state agency you go to work for them, the public can't help but ask, is that appropriate," Bonini said. "When somebody has to say they recused themselves, that tells you maybe you should look into it."

Ian McConnel, Biden's former chief deputy, said he made the decision to intervene in the case with input from Matt Lintner, the Justice Department's fraud unit director. He defended Biden's recusal, saying the attorney general never reviewed the complaint before the Department of Justice intervened in March 2014.

"At no point did Attorney General Biden have any input in that decision," McConnel said. "He was not briefed. It was an independent judgment made by myself and Matt Lintner."

Biden could also face more general criticism related to the firm, which sues large corporations on behalf of institutional investors in securities and corporate governance cases.

Grant represents hedge fund investors in a lawsuit challenging terms of a $1.2 billion buyout of Dole Food Co., a major employer at the Port of Wilmington that is seeking changes to Delaware law to blunt the effect of such shareholder suits.

Bonini said the firm, widely regarded as a successful plaintiffs' litigator, "looks to me like one of those frivolous corporate litigation firms. My take is we want to support job creators, not necessarily sue them."

Grant said he's unsure of Biden's plans for 2016, but has been given no indication Biden will not run.

"That's Beau's decision," Grant said. "I figure this is a win-win situation. If Beau decides to run for governor, G&E's loss will be Delaware's gain. If Beau decides not to, or does and is defeated, and he practices with us for 20 or 30 years, I am extremely happy about that. I think Beau is in a great situation. We are in an extremely phenomenal situation."

McConnel indicated Biden is committed to a run for governor, saying "2016 is the goal. I've had conversations with AG Biden just on this topic, and how much energy he gets from being a part of helping people up and down the state of Delaware."

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