The final vote needed to officially nominate Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate was cast by Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.), who had once admitted to beating his ex-wife, as reported by the Daily Caller.
As it is tradition that the representatives of the nominee’s home state cast the final nominating votes in a symbolic gesture, the final votes this year were cast by Carper and Governor John Carney (D-Del.), as both represent the state that Biden represented in the Senate for nearly 40 years.
In an interview in 1998, Carper admitted that he had once hit his ex-wife Diane in the face, although he claimed that he regretted it and would never do it again. In a deposition that eventually surfaced in 2000, Carper admitted that the blow had left her with “some discoloration of her left eye and some puffiness.” Additionally, a New York Post article from 1982 alleged that Carper would also occasionally beat her two children from a previous marriage, which Carper denied. Carper and Dianne Isaacs eventually divorced in 1983 after just five years of marriage, and Carper eventually remarried his current wife Martha in 1985.
In his statement as he cast the final vote, Carper said that “Our nation faces daunting challenges, but I have known Joe Biden for 40 years, and there is nobody I trust more to lead our party, unite our country, and restore our standing in the world.”