In an essay published Friday by New York Magazine’s The Cut, the former assemblywoman, Lucy Flores, a Democrat, said she was 35 years old at the time of her encounter with Biden, who was then vice president. Biden, she wrote, had agreed to come to a rally to help her fledgling campaign for lieutenant governor of Nevada.
Flores wrote that at first, she had been “grateful and flattered.” But as she was preparing to take the stage, she “felt two hands on my shoulders” and “froze.”
“Why is the vice president of the United States touching me?” she recalled wondering.
“I felt him get closer to me from behind,” she continued. “He leaned further in and inhaled my hair. I was mortified.”
Then, she added: “He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head. My brain couldn’t process what was happening. I was embarrassed. I was shocked. I was confused.”
Her allegations come as Biden is poised to announce whether he will join the 2020 Democratic primary field.
Bill Russo, a spokesman for Biden, said the former vice president did not recall what Flores described. Russo said Biden had been “pleased to support Lucy Flores’ candidacy for lieutenant governor of Nevada in 2014 and to speak on her behalf.”
“Neither then, nor in the years since, did he or the staff with him at the time have an inkling that Ms. Flores had been at any time uncomfortable, nor do they recall what she describes,” his statement said. “But Vice President Biden believes that Ms. Flores has every right to share her own recollection and reflections.”
Flores did not immediately reply to a message seeking comment early Saturday. But shortly after her essay was published, she tweeted that writing and sharing it had been “an incredibly difficult thing to do, but something that felt necessary.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.