After agonizing deliberation, the Vermont senator won his vote.

“I almost can’t believe I did that. But If somehow he can pull off what he wants to do, I don’t care whether they call him a socialist or anything else,” Fahey said. “He may not be the man to do it, but I tossed my vote to him in the hope that he gets the people to work with him in Washington to accomplish some of his goals.”

Fahey was party of a fiery exchange with Biden when he sought the 1988 Democratic nomination. He asked the then-Delaware senator about his academic record in law school, and Biden’s snarky reaction was captured by C-SPAN cameras.

“I think I have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect. I went to law school on a full academic scholarship, the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship,” Biden said. The moment helped derail Biden’s 1988 bid, and he later apologized to Fahey for losing his temper.

At a late January event for Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign in Claremont, Fahey told the Washington Examiner that he was a longtime Biden fan through his 2008 presidential bid and 2020 campaign and planned to vote for him. Biden remembers and has a relationship with his old foil and greeted him at his own campaign event in Claremont the next day. Fahey volunteered to make calls for Biden in the weeks before the New Hampshire primary.

But over the last week, Fahey lost confidence in Biden, 77, and said he lost sleep over what to do at the voting booth.

The former vice president’s poor showing in the Iowa caucuses was a red flag for Fahey, as was a lack of energy from Biden during Friday’s debate and the appearance of not taking New Hampshire seriously.

“Halfway through that debate, you could see him, you know, fading away. He was looking much more tired. He didn’t look like the same guy that came on the stage earlier in the debate,” Fahey said.

“It concerned me, the little amount of campaigning he did here in New Hampshire,” he continued. “I gave him money, I met an awful lot of people who worked in his campaign, young people, and they were working their tails off for him. And he just didn’t seem to have, perhaps, the energy to go out there and match their work.”

Biden had about half the number of staff in New Hampshire as his top-tier rivals. He escaped to Delaware to meet with advisers on Thursday rather than hold campaign events, and he skipped out on his own primary night party Tuesday to hold a campaign event in South Carolina.

Fahey made pro-con lists for the candidates and narrowed down his choices to former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The campaigns tried hard to court him, and Sanders campaign co-chairwoman and former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner met with Fahey for about 15 minutes.

“I probably never voted before where I had as mixed feelings and uncertainty as I did this time around,” Fahey said. “I’m not sure that I knew what I was gonna do when I went into the voting booth yesterday, and I told my wife, I said, ‘Wait for me, because I think I’m going to be in there quite a while.'”

While Fahey is confident in his vote, he has doubts about Sanders’s ability to overcome skepticism in the party establishment and generate enthusiasm that the Democrats need in November. And if Michael Bloomberg won the Democratic presidential nomination, he would be open to supporting him.

Fahey is writing a letter to the former vice president to explain why he could not vote for him this time around.