Timothy Michael Kaine ( KAYN; born February 26, 1958) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Virginia, a seat he has held since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he served from 2006 to 2010 as the 70th governor of Virginia and from 2002 to 2006 as the 38th lieutenant governor of Virginia. Kaine was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in the 2016 presidential election, running alongside presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Kaine grew up in Overland Park, Kansas. He graduated from the University of Missouri and earned a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. Afterward, he entered private practice and became a lecturer at the University of Richmond School of Law. He was first elected to public office in 1994, when he won a seat on the Richmond city council. He was elected mayor of Richmond in 1998, holding that position until being elected lieutenant governor of Virginia in 2001.
Kaine was elected governor of Virginia in 2005 and held that office from 2006 to 2010. He chaired the Democratic National Committee from 2009 to 2011. In 2012, Kaine was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating former Virginia governor and senator George Allen. He was reelected to a second term by a wide margin in 2018, defeating Republican nominee Corey Stewart, and to a third term in 2024, defeating Republican nominee Hung Cao.
In 2016, presidential nominee Clinton selected Kaine as her running mate for that year's presidential election. While winning a plurality of the national popular vote, Clinton and Kaine lost the Electoral College, and therefore the general election, to the Republican ticket of Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
Early life and education
Kaine was born at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is the eldest of three sons born to Mary Kathleen (née Burns), a home economics teacher, and Albert Alexander Kaine Jr., a welder and the owner of a small iron-working shop. He was raised Catholic. One of Kaine's great-grandparents was Scottish and the other seven were Irish. Kaine's family moved to Overland Park, Kansas, when Kaine was two years old, and he grew up in the Kansas City area. In 1976, he graduated from Rockhurst High School, a Jesuit all-boys preparatory school in Kansas City, Missouri. At Rockhurst, Kaine joined the debate team and was elected student body president.
Kaine received his Bachelor of Arts in economics from the University of Missouri in 1979, completing his degree in three years and graduating Omicron Delta Kappa and summa cum laude. He was a Coro Foundation fellow in Kansas City in 1978. He entered Harvard Law School in 1979, interrupting his law studies after his first year to work in Honduras for nine months from 1980 to 1981, helping Jesuit missionaries who ran a Catholic school in El Progreso. While running a vocational center that taught carpentry and welding, he also helped increase the school's enrollment by recruiting local villagers. Kaine is fluent in Spanish as a result of his time in Honduras.
After returning from Honduras, Kaine met his future wife, first-year Harvard Law student Anne Holton. He graduated from Harvard Law School with a J.D. degree in 1983. Kaine and Holton moved to Holton's hometown of Richmond, Virginia, after graduation, and Kaine was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1984.
Legal career and Richmond City Council
After graduating from law school, Kaine was a law clerk for Judge R. Lanier Anderson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in Macon, Georgia. He then joined the Richmond law firm of Little, Parsley & Cluverius, P.C. In 1987, Kaine became a director of the law firm of Mezzullo & McCandlish, P.C. He practiced law in Richmond for 17 years, specializing in fair housing law and representing clients discriminated against on the basis of race or disability. He was a board member of the Virginia chapter of Housing Opportunities Made Equal, which he represented in a landmark redlining discrimination lawsuit against Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. arising from the company's practices in Richmond. Kaine won a $100.5 million verdict in the case; the judgment was overturned on appeal, and Kaine and his colleagues negotiated a $17.5 million settlement.
Kaine did regular pro bono work. In 1988, he started teaching legal ethics as an adjunct professor at the University of Richmond School of Law. Kaine taught at the University of Richmond for six years; his students included future Virginia attorney general Mark Herring. He was a founding member of the Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness.
Kaine had a largely apolitical childhood, but he became interested in politics in part due to the influence of his wife's family and his experience attending Richmond city council meetings. In 1994, he was elected the 2nd district member of the city council of the independent city of Richmond, defeating incumbent city councilor Benjamin P.A. Warthen by 97 votes. He took his seat on July 1 and retained the position until September 10, 2001, when he resigned; William J. Pantele was appointed to succeed him. Kaine spent four terms on the city council, the latter two as mayor of Richmond.
Mayor of Richmond (1998–2001)
On July 1, 1998, Kaine was elected mayor of Richmond, succeeding Larry Chavis. The majority-black Richmond City Council chose him by an 8 to 1 vote, making him the city's first white mayor in more than ten years, which was viewed as a surprise. Rudy McCollum, an African American city councilor also interested in the mayoralty, decided to back Kaine after a private meeting between the two, clearing the way for him. Previous mayors had treated the role as primarily ceremonial, with the city manager effectively operating the city; Kaine treated it as a full-time job, taking a more hands-on role.
As mayor, Kaine used a sale-leaseback arrangement to obtain funds to renovate the historic Maggie L. Walker High School and reopen it in 2000 as a magnet governor's school, the Maggie L. Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies, which "now serves the top students in Central Virginia". Three elementary schools and one middle school were also built in Richmond under Kaine. Along with Commonwealth's attorney David Hicks, U.S. attorney James Comey, and police chief Jerry Oliver, Kaine supported Project Exile, an initiative that shifted gun crimes to federal court, where defendants faced harsher sentences. Though controversial, the effort gained widespread support and the city's homicide rate fell by 55% during Kaine's mayoralty. Kaine touted Project Exile during his 2001 campaign for lieutenant governor.
On several occasions, Kaine voted against tax increases, and he supported a tax abatement program for renovated buildings, which was credited for a housing renovation boom in the city. Forbes magazine named Richmond one of "the 10 best cities in America to do business" during Kaine's term.
According to John Moeser, a professor emeritus of urban studies and planning at Virginia Commonwealth University and later a visiting fellow at the University of Richmond's Center for Civic Engagement, Kaine "was energetic, charismatic and, most important, spoke openly about his commitment to racial reconciliation in Richmond." The New York Times wrote that Kaine "was by all accounts instrumental in bridging the city's racial divide". In the early part of his term, Kaine apologized for Richmond's role in slavery; the apology was generally well received as "a genuine, heartfelt expression". In the latter part of his term, there was a contentious debate over the inclusion of a portrait of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in a set of historic murals to be placed on city floodwalls. Many African Americans were outraged that Lee would appear on city walls, while Southern heritage groups demanded that the picture remain. Kaine proposed a compromise whereby Lee would appear as part of a series of murals that also included figures like Abraham Lincoln and Powhatan Beaty. The NAACP criticized his stance, but Kaine argued that placing Lee on the floodwall made sense in context, and that "Much of our history is not pleasant; you can't whitewash it." His proposal passed the council by a 6–3 vote.
During his mayoralty, Kaine drew criticism for spending $6,000 in public funds on buses to the Million Mom March, an anti-gun-violence rally in Washington, D.C.; after a backlash, he raised the money privately and reimbursed the city.
Lieutenant governor of Virginia (2002–2006)
Kaine ran for lieutenant governor of Virginia in 2001. He joined the race after state senator Emily Couric dropped out due to pancreatic cancer and endorsed Kaine as her replacement. In the Democratic primary election, Kaine ran against state delegate Alan A. Diamonstein of Newport News, and state delegate Jerrauld C. Jones of Norfolk. Kaine won the nomination, with 39.7% of the vote to Diamonstein's 31.4% and Jones's 28.9%.
In the general election, Kaine won with 925,974 votes (50.35%), edging out his Republican opponent, state delegate Jay Katzen, who received 883,886 (48.06%). Libertarian Gary Reams received 28,783 votes (1.57%).
Kaine was inaugurated on January 12, 2002, and was sworn in by his wife Anne Holton, a state judge.
Governor of Virginia (2006–2010)
Election
In 2005, Kaine ran for governor of Virginia against Republican candidate Jerry W. Kilgore, a former state attorney general. Kaine was considered an underdog for most of the race, trailing in polls for most of the campaign. Two September polls showed Kaine trailing Kilgore—by four percentage points in a Washington Post poll and by one point in a Mason-Dixon/Roanoke Times poll. The final polls of the race before the election showed Kaine slightly edging ahead of Kilgore.
Kaine ultimately prevailed, winning 1,025,942 votes (51.7%) to Kilgore's 912,327 (46.0%). A third candidate, independent state Senator H. Russell Potts Jr., ran as an "independent Republican" and received 43,953 votes (2.2%).
Kaine emphasized fiscal responsibility and a centrist message. He expressed support for controlling sprawl and tackling longstanding traffic issues, an issue that resonated in the northern Virginia exurbs. He benefited from his association with the popular outgoing Democratic governor, Mark Warner, who had performed well in traditionally Republican areas of the state. On the campaign trail, Kaine referred to the "Warner-Kaine administration" in speeches and received Warner's strong backing. Kilgore later attributed his defeat to Warner's high popularity and President George W. Bush's sharply declining popularity; Bush held a rally with Kilgore on the campaign's final day.
The campaign turned sharply negative in its final weeks, with Kilgore running television attack ads that falsely claimed that Kaine believed that "Hitler doesn't qualify for the death penalty." The ads also attacked Kaine for his service ten years earlier as a court-appointed attorney for a death-row inmate. The editorial boards of The Washington Post and a number of Virginia newspapers denounced the ads as a "smear" and "dishonest." Kaine responded with an ad "in which he told voters that he opposes capital punishment but would take an oath and enforce the death penalty. In later polls, voters said they believed Kaine's response and were angered by Kilgore's negative ads."
In the election, Kaine won by large margins in the Democratic strongholds such as Richmond and northern Virginia's inner suburbs (such as Alexandria and Arlington), as well as in the Democratic-trending Fairfax County. Kaine also won Republican-leaning areas in Northern Virginia's outer suburbs, including Prince William County and Loudoun County, where George W. Bush had beat John Kerry in the previous year's presidential election, and performed "surprisingly well in Republican strongholds like Virginia Beach and Chesapeake." Kaine also defeated Kilgore in the burgeoning Richmond suburbs. Kilgore led in southwest Virginia and in the Shenandoah Valley.
Tenure
Kaine was sworn in as governor at the colonial Capitol at Williamsburg, on January 14, 2006, the first governor since Thomas Jefferson to be inaugurated there.
Kaine was chairman of the Southern Governors' Association from 2008 to 2009.
Democratic response to State of the Union address
On January 31, 2006, Kaine gave the Democratic response to President George W. Bush's 2006 State of the Union address. In it, he criticized the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act for "wreaking havoc on local school districts"; criticized congressional Republicans for cutting student loan programs; and condemned as "reckless" Bush's spending increases and tax cuts. Kaine praised bipartisan initiatives in Virginia "to make record investments in education" and to improve veterans' access to veterans' benefits. He criticized the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq War and treatment of U.S. soldiers, saying that "the American people were given inaccurate information about reasons for invading Iraq"; "our troops in Iraq were not given the best body armor or the best intelligence"; and "the administration wants to further reduce military and veterans' benefits."
Energy, the environment, and conservation
As governor, Kaine protected 400,000 acres (1,600 km2) of Virginia land from development, fulfilling a promise he made in 2005. His conservation efforts focused on conservation easements (voluntary easements that preserve the private ownership of a piece of land while also permanently protecting it from development); a substantial Virginia land preservation tax credit encouraged easements. From 2004 to 2009, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation (a quasi-governmental entity set up in 1966 to preserve open land in the state) protected more land than it had in the previous 40 years, a fact Kaine touted as his term drew to a close.
As governor, Kaine established the Climate Change Commission, a bipartisan panel to study climate change issues. The panel was shuttered under Kaine's Republican successor, Governor Robert F. McDonnell, but revived (as the Governor's Climate Change and Resiliency Update Commission) under McDonnell's successor, Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe.
In 2008, Kaine supported a coal-fired power plant project in Wise County, clashing with environmentalists who opposed the project.
In 2009, Kaine expressed support for tighter restrictions on mountaintop removal coal mining imposed by the Obama administration.
Healthcare and public health
In October 2006, Kaine signed an executive order banning smoking in all government buildings and state-owned cars as of January 1, 2007. He signed legislation banning smoking in restaurants and bars, with some exceptions, in March 2009, making Virginia the first Southern state to do so.
In 2007, the Republican-controlled Virginia General Assembly passed legislation, with "overwhelming bipartisan support", to require girls to receive the HPV vaccine (which immunizes recipients against a virus that causes cervical cancer) before entering high school. Kaine expressed "some qualms" about the legislation and pushed for a strong opt-out provision, ultimately signing a bill that included a provision allowing parents to opt out of the requirement without citing a reason.
In 2007, Kaine secured increases in state funding for nursing in the Virginia General Assembly and announced a 10% salary increase for nursing faculty above the normal salary increase for state employees, plus additional funds for scholarships for nursing master's programs. The initiatives were aimed at addressing a shortage of practicing nurses.
Virginia Tech shooting
After the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, in which Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people, Kaine appointed an eight-member Virginia Tech Review Panel, chaired by retired Virginia State Police superintendent W. Gerald Massengill, to probe the event. The commission members included specialists in psychology, law, forensics and higher education as well as former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. The commission first met in May 2007, and issued its findings and recommendations in August 2007. Among other recommendations, the panel proposed many mental health reforms. Based on the panel's recommendations, Kaine proposed $42 million of investment in mental health programs and reforms, included "boosting access to outpatient and emergency mental health services, increasing the number of case managers and improving monitoring of community-based providers." In April 2007, Kaine signed an executive order instructing state agencies to step up efforts to block gun sales to people involuntarily committed to inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment centers. Kaine, who had been in Japan on a trade mission at the time of the shootings, received widespread praise for his quick return to the state and his handling of the issue.
Budget and economy
Among Kaine's greatest challenges as governor came during the 2008 financial crisis; The Washington Post wrote that "perhaps his greatest success was keeping the state running despite [the crisis]." Amid the Great Recession, unemployment in Virginia remained lower than the national average. During Kaine's tenure as governor, the unemployment rate in Virginia rose from 3.2% to 7.4%, a smaller increase than the national rate, which rose from 4.7% to 9.9% during the same period.
As governor, Kaine approved about $3.31 billion in general fund spending cuts, and after his term in office, the Virginia General Assembly adopted about $1.33 billion in additional budget cuts that Kaine had recommended, for a total of $4.64 billion in cuts. The Washington Post wrote, "Unable to raise taxes and required by law to balance the budget, he was forced to make unpopular cuts that led to such things as shuttered highway rest stops and higher public university tuition." Virginia was one of three states to earn the highest grade in terms of management in a report by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States. Virginia took first place each year from 2006 to 2009 in Forbes magazine's "Best States For Business" rankings.
Infrastructure and transportation
In July 2007, during the debate on the Silver Line of the Washington Metro through Tysons Corner, Kaine supported an elevated track solution rather than a tunnel, citing costs and potential delays that would put federal funding at risk.
In 2006, Kaine pressed the general assembly to support a legislative package to ease severe traffic congestion by spending about $1 billion annually for highway construction, repairs to aging roads, mass transit, and other transportation projects. The money would be raised through increases in taxes and fees that would have raised an estimated $4 billion in revenue over four years. The Democratic-controlled Senate supported the plan, but the Republican-controlled House was unwilling to approve the taxes necessary to carry out the project, and the effort failed even after a special session of the legislature was called over the stalemate.
In 2007, Republicans in the General Assembly passed their own transportation-funding bill. Rather than a statewide tax increase to finance the transportation improvements, as Kaine and most legislative Democrats favored, the Republican bill called for transportation funding "to come from borrowing $2.5 billion and paying the debt costs out of the general fund"; authorized local tax increase in Northern Virginia; increased fees and taxes on rental cars, commercial real estate, and hotels; and increased traffic infraction fines and driver's licenses fees.
Kaine and most legislative Democrats opposed the Republican legislation, calling it inadequate to address traffic congestion and arguing that the withdrawal of funds from the general fund would affect core services such as health care, law enforcement, and education. Kaine ultimately signed a bill with amendments reflecting "concerns by local government officials and a bipartisan group of lawmakers who were concerned that the plan took too much money from the state's general fund."
Education
Under Kaine, participation in Virginia in early childhood education increased by 40.2% due to his expansion of the Virginia Preschool Initiative, which makes pre-kindergarten more accessible to four-year-olds from households close to the poverty line. Kaine sought increases to the budget for preschool programs every year during his term as governor. Virginia was rated as the best state to raise a child in a 2007 report by Education Week and the Pew Center on the States.
Cabinet and appointments
Kaine made the following appointments to his Virginia Governor's Cabinet:
Chief of Staff: William Leighty (2006–2007), Wayne Turnage (2007–2010)
Secretary of Administration: Viola Baskerville (2006–2010)
Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry: Robert Bloxom (2006–2010)