LAS VEGAS _ There might be no politician alive more at home outside of a union hall than Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
And his trip west for a campaign rally at the home base of the culinary workers' local was no exception.
"You've been just wonderful, wonderful to me," Biden said in the local's parking lot, standing in front of a Clinton-Kaine campaign sign in the relative shadow of the Stratosphere Tower ride. "I wouldn't have won without labor."
If anything, Biden has only gotten more aggressive in his efforts to campaign for Democrats, and particularly against GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump after recently revealed 2005 Trump comments about the treatment of women. Biden called the remarks "the textbook definition of sexual assault."
Combating violence against women has long been one of Biden's signature priorities, having written the federal law against it while leading the Senate Judiciary Committee. And after The New York Times reported Wednesday evening on two women alleging unwanted contact by Trump, Biden again did not mince words.
He said it was his father who inspired him to champion the Violence Against Women Act, and he has often had people mistakenly attribute the inspiration for the landmark law to his mother.
"He said the cardinal sin of the sins ... was for a man to raise his hand to a woman," Biden said.
"I'm tired of new politicians who want to go to Washington to demean women. I really mean it," Biden said, before specifying that he was referring to Trump. "
Trump has categorically denied the charges.
"They are pure fiction and they are outright lies," Trump said while campaigning in Florida Thursday. An attorney for Trump has demanded The Times retract the report, sending a formal letter to executive editor Dean Baquet.
In Nevada, Biden appeared as a surrogate for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's White House bid, as well as for Democratic Senate candidate Catherine Cortez Masto, in a closely watched race to replace retiring Minority Leader Harry Reid.
Biden said he had learned about Cortez Masto from his late son Beau, who served with her when she was Delaware's state attorney general while Cortez Masto held the same post in Nevada.
"He was the finest man I've ever known," Biden said. "When he announced for governor before he died, no one even announced they were going to run against."
Biden, who spent 36 years in the chamber representing Delaware, said he has made getting the majority back a top personal priority, a point underscored by his travel.
"We are grateful to have Vice President Biden's support as we seek to win back the Senate," Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokeswoman Sadie Weiner told Roll Call. "No one knows the Senate better than he does, and he's a strong, tireless messenger for the importance of a Democratic-held Senate."
Biden described the Senate as an "institution that I have great respect for that's been lost. It's really become part of the problem in Washington, the dysfunction in Washington. It is sad.
"But it can be returned, and Hillary is going to need a Democratic Senate," he said.
Biden has to date headlined about 20 fundraisers for the DSCC or individual Democratic candidates, everything from one for the campaign committee at the Washington, D.C., home of former Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., to multiple events benefiting Gov. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Patrick Murphy of Florida.
He swung by the Democratic National Committee offices on Tuesday to rally the staff of the DNC and the House and Senate campaign committees.
Getting unionized voters to the polls in and around Las Vegas is a key to Democratic chances to hold the Senate seat, pick up House seats in the Silver State and to put Nevada in Clinton's column. Biden's hosts Thursday at the Culinary Workers Local 226 are essential to that effort. The union said in a statement Thursday that it had registered more than 8,000 new voters, as well as helping some 2,200-plus members attain American citizenship.
Before Thursday's event at the union hall, Biden and Cortez Masto visited a staff dining facility at the Mandalay Bay Resort on the southern end of the Strip.
The vice president was also in prime form at a local campaign office, where he hugged a woman located in the front row during his own introduction.
"She asked for the hug," Biden said.
