While Virginians took advantage of two perfect fall days last weekend, indulging in leaf-peeping, or pumpkin-patch visiting or cheering at the U.Va.-Tarheels game, Sen. Tim Kaine was hopping from a Pittsburgh high school to a chilly Philadelphia sports park to a Sunday morning TV grilling on Wikileaks, to a Florida community center.
Campaigning for running mate Hillary Clinton meant being stuck in hotel rooms, buses and airplanes zigzaging from one end of the country to the other on the kind of fall weekend when he’d like to be camping at False Cape State Park or hiking in the Shenandoah Valley.
“The colors have got to be wonderful,” he sighed, taking a brief break from a swing through Ohio, his voice raspy from days crammed with speeches and interviews and an incipient cold.
“Going from muggy Miami to rainy Cleveland, shaking thousands of hands, all those airplanes — they really dry out your throat,” he said.
But even if the campaign hasn’t brought him to Virginia much, his speeches touch longstanding Virginia themes.
At an evening rally at University of Pennsylvania athletics park last weekend, Kaine said Election Day could “in an instant change the way little girls and little boys look at their future,” echoing a theme he floated at his one Hampton Roads rally last month, when he said he owed his political career to strong women and was proud to be helping another win the White House.
“I’ve been the one with my name on the bumper sticker, with my name on the ballot and on the yard signs but I’ve had strong women backing me up,” he told that Norfolk crowd.
At the University of Florida the next day, he talked about issues that defined his political priorities as governor and senator.
Virginia as a model
“Florida and Virginia have some similarities because we are both seeing the effects of sea-level rise. … I’m not talking about a tomorrow issue, I’m talking about today. We’re seeing it in a very dramatic way,” said Kaine, who’s been pushing for more federal, state and local cooperation to tackle the challenge in Hampton Roads.
“We want to do all kinds of things in the education space — pre-K, celebrating great futures, career and technical education — so our workforce can have the best skills they can have,” he told the Florida crowd. Kaine called for universal preschool, to be funded by the state, when he ran for governor, and while he couldn’t get the General Assembly to go along, convinced legislators to double the level of state funding. As a senator, he co-founded a bipartisan career and technical education caucus, and pushed for legislation to improve vocation education and expand apprenticeship opportunities.
Later, at an Orlando community center, Kaine spoke of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in that city and the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech, during his term as governor.
“We ought to be able to come up with some kind of a reasonable rule that protects people from these kind of horrible tragedies,” Kaine told the Floridians.
On the trail, he said, he’s found confirmation of the new political wisdom that 21st century Virginia is a version of America in miniature, with its mix of rural, city and suburban voters; its mix of people whose families have been here for generations and newcomers, some from all over the world; and its mix of different races, religions and incomes. Northern Virginia’s booming high-tech economy and the struggling coal mining counties of Southwest Virginia mirror successes and challenges many other Americans also face.
But campaigning across the nation he’s learned something, too, about a part of Virginia — and Hampton Roads — that is distinct: the huge importance of the military here.
“In rural Ohio, in Nevada, everywhere, I hear such strong support for our military,” he said. “Sometimes, on (the Senate) Armed Services (Committee), you can feel you’re just talking about Virginia, but to hear this kind of support, it’s heartening.”
The first Virginian on a major party’s national ticket since Winfield Scott in 1852, Kaine’s folksy acceptance speech at the Democratic convention drew a generally warm response. On late night TV and on social media he quickly became “America’s Dad.”
It was the Kaine Virginians had come to know over his two-decade political career as mayor of Richmond, lieutenant governor, governor and, since 2012, senator — informal manner, a bit of Spanish, lots of talk about neighborliness and community and working together.
“I’ve known Tim for 20 years, and I know him to be a good man, and someone who works hard to get along with everyone. That’s the strength he brought to the Democratic ticket, and he should be commended for that,” said Bill Bolling, a Republican who served as Kaine’s lieutenant governor.
That debate
Then came the shock of the vice presidential debate, when Virginians watched an unfamiliar Kaine, tone sharp, at times interrupting Republican Mike Pence, trying to force his opponent into making ill-considered or embarrassing statements.
“Unfortunately, the role Tim was asked to play in this campaign was that of an attack dog and it just didn’t mesh with his personality,” said Bolling. “That’s not the Tim Kaine we have known in Virginia, and that role did not serve him well. Frankly, I think it hurt the public’s perception of Tim and left a lot of people not liking him very much. That really is a shame. …”
“But the good news,” Bolling added, “is that Tim will have four years to turn that perception around if he becomes vice president.”
The end result of that debate — a tough campaign ad — was probably what Kaine was directed to accomplish, said political scientist Bob Holsworth, managing principal of the DecideSmart political consultancy in Richmond and founding director of the Center for Public Policy and the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University.
“Yeah, I got dings from friends back in Virginia,” said Kaine. “You know, I was a civil rights lawyer. If I think a case is worth making, I’m going to battle for it. That’s part of who I am, too. I did have a strategy … the aim isn’t to win a debate, it is to win an election.”
At the debate, Kaine said he wanted, first, to block Pence from picking up some of Trump’s attacks on Clinton and, second, to force Pence to either defend or distance himself from some of Trump’s more controversial statements.
It was an early effort that marked a new direction in the campaign — forcing Republican candidates seeking other offices to take a stand on Trump — that would pick up steam a few days after the debate, with the release of a tape in which Trump bragged about how his TV stardom gave him a license to kiss and grope women. The Clinton campaign quickly aired an ad that contrasted Pence’s denials of Kaine’s jabs — about Trump’s proposals for a deportation force and a ban on Muslim immigrants, the New York billionaire’s views on Vladimir Putin, nuclear weapons and women who get abortions — with clips of Trump saying all the things Kaine had listed.
But Ed Lynch, a political scientist at Hollins University and former chairman of the Roanoke County Republican Committee, isn’t sure how much Kaine is helping, either in Virginia or across the country.
The sharp edge …
“I think the answer to that is the fact that Virginia remained competitive until early October, and may still be competitive.” he said. “At least the Trump campaign thinks it is, and the Clinton campaign is still running ads here. Kaine was chosen to allow the Clinton campaign to take Virginia for granted. Clinton looks likely to win Virginia, but at a much greater cost in time, effort and money than the campaign should have had a right to expect with Kaine on the ticket.”
He thinks the relative small crowd at an early voting kick-off rally this week in West Palm Beach is another sign.
“The local Florida news outlets said 300. Even 300 is terrible at this stage of the campaign,” he said.
At that rally Kaine echoed another line from his September campaign stop in Norfolk: his eight-to-zero won-loss election record here.
“You can beat me at Scrabble,” he said. “You can beat me in Trivial Pursuit. You are not going to be beat me in an election.”
There is a competitive edge to Kaine that he doesn’t often show.
“Tim Kaine’s most visible moment in this campaign was his debate with Mike Pence. By most accounts, his attack dog moments were shrill, repetitive and ineffective,” Lynch said. “Kaine would have been much better off, in my opinion, sticking to policy issues and focusing his attacks on Pence’s decisions as governor, rather than a general attack on Donald Trump.”
But at that debate, as with other Republican campaign efforts, Pence’s attack on Kaine’s record may have fallen short, said Olusoji Akomolafe, a political scientist at Norfolk State University.
“The GOP’s attack on Kaine’s tenure as governor is a dead-end. While it may not have been extraordinarily glamorous in terms of achievements … you will be hard pressed to find Virginians who will describe his tenure as total failure,” he said.
… and the friendly smile
As governor, Kaine had to get his initiatives through a General Assembly controlled by Republicans, most of them put off by his proposal just a few days after taking office to boost taxes on car insurance, the sales tax on vehicle purchases, fines for driving offenses and fees for vehicle registration. He and the legislators struggled with one of the state’s biggest fiscal challenges after the recession of 2008 hammered tax revenue, ending up with a balanced budget as well as disappointed hopes. But few, if any, ill feelings persisted.
On the campaign trail, Kaine said, he likes to talk about working with GOP legislators.
“I’ll talk about how I’d sit down with (Speaker) Bill Howell, and find we shared a commitment to open spaces, to nonsmoking restaurants,” Kaine said, referring to the powerful Republican whose firm hand on the House of Delegates can make a political initiative possible, or kill it dead.
Kaine’s a big believer in talking with, and listening to, politicians from across the aisle. It’s a big part of what he does, and what he likes, about being a senator. It’s one reason why, if he is elected vice president, he’ll miss being a senator, even if the job means he will preside over the Senate.
“Personally, I can’t imagine what would be the attraction of being vice president in a White House that also includes Bill Clinton,” said Lynch, at Hollins.
“When it comes time for a goodwill tour of Africa, Latin America, Central Europe, etc., does Kaine honestly believe that Hillary will send him, rather than her husband? Bill will also be doing a lot of the political work — he’s a far more effective fundraiser and has 10 times the name recognition. If Clinton is elected, I can see Bill spending a lot of time in Hollywood and New York, while Kaine is talking to the Democratic Party dinner in Altoona, Pa.”
Norfolk State’s Akomolafe sees Kaine as an important player.
“Tim Kaine is a team player and would likely not be anything like we saw during Dick Cheney’s tenure. He is a technocrat and an executive at the same time. I am curious to know how he will marry those two roles in his vice presidency,” he said.
Bolling sees an even more central role.
“He could be a valuable partner to Hillary Clinton in reaching out to work with Republicans in the Senate and look for areas in which the administration and the Congress can cooperate. Tim’s always had the ability to do that, and I think it’s an important role he could play if he becomes vice president,” Bolling said.
For his part, Kaine, asked if he would have any regrets about leaving the Senate, offered this hint, recalling a conversation with his wife, Anne Holton, after Clinton asked him to run with her.
“I said, ‘Gee, Anne, you had to sacrifice being a judge when I was governor, you’ve had to resign being (Virginia) secretary of Education,'” Kaine recalled. “And she said, ‘Well, this is a new phase and new chance to do things … and that’s pretty exciting.'”
Ress can be reached by phone at 757-247-4535.
