'Heartbroken': Portsmouth's Mary Carey Foley sad to see her friend Joe Biden exit race

PORTSMOUTH — Mary Carey Foley's reaction to her dear friend Joe Biden dropping ou t of the 2024 presidential race was emotional.

"I'm heartbroken," she wrote in response to a text Sunday afternoon.

Asked if she would like to talk to share her thoughts, she added, "I just can't do it."

Biden made sure to visit Foley and her mother, Eileen, the beloved former Portsmouth mayor, during many trips over the years to the Seacoast in New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary state. Eileen Foley died in 2016, and Biden's friendship with Mary Carey Foley continued. The relationship goes back nearly 40 years.

Mary Carey Foley has said she first met Joe Biden in 1985 or 1986, back in the days when any Democratic candidate who ran in the primary made certain to meet her mother, the longest-serving mayor in Portsmouth history.

“Not long into the meeting, under the table, here comes an elbow from my mother, and then, a few moments later, I elbowed her,” Foley said, describing the instant approval they both felt for Biden.

Biden met the Foleys before his first presidential run in the 1988 election, and the relationship with Mary Carey Foley has lasted to this day. After Biden was chosen as Barack Obama's running mate in 2008, Mary Carey was invited by Biden to the January 2009 inauguration.

“And I never let go, and he never let go of me,” she said after Biden was elected president in 2020. “It’s just been a sweet friendship.”

Mary Carey Foley always kept faith in Biden

“We never gave up on him,” she said. “I never gave up on the thought that he would be president of the United States.”

When it finally happened, in 2020, Mary Carey Foley's loyalty was rewarded. She was selected as one of New Hampshire's four Electoral College electors for Biden, along with then-Somersworth Mayor Dana Hilliard, state Sen. Donna Soucy, and state Rep. Steve Shurtleff.

More: NH, Maine Democrats and Republicans react as Biden drops out

"I think it is unbelievable that I get to cast my vote endorsing my friend Joe," Mary Carey Foley said in 2020, prior to casting the electoral vote. "I never thought for one minute that he would not make this happen. When people ask why I am so dedicated to him, my reply is that he is a character, with character.”

2012 story Luck o' the Irish smiles on Carey Foley with White House invitation

When Biden decided not to run for president in 2016, following the death of his son, Beau, Mary Coley Foley had a prediction after Donald Trump won the presidency.

She said to herself and others, “Joe has to run next time because the world is going to be ready for a nice person. That’s been my message.”

More: Do NH Democratic delegates have to vote for Biden? Your delegate questions answered

Reporting by Jane Murphy and Karen Dandurant from Seacoast Media Group archives is used in this report.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: 'Heartbroken': Portsmouth's Mary Carey Foley sad to see her friend Joe Biden exit race