George Allen and Tim Kaine have a Washington problem. Allen, a Republican, and Kaine, a Democrat, were both popular governors in Virginia. But each also has close ties to Washington, Allen as a senator from 2001 to 2007 and Kaine as President Obama’s handpicked chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2009 until this year.
Now, with both men running to become their party’s 2012 U.S. Senate nominee, those ties are complicating both of their efforts to portray themselves as the kind of independent political outsider that would appeal to the state’s swing voters.
Republicans attacked Kaine’s support for Obama and national Democrats’ big-ticket agenda items, including the economic stimulus legislation and health care reforms Virginia has asked the courts to strike down as unconstitutional.
“Kaine spent the last several years as the number one cheerleader for [Democrats’] failed tax-and-spend agenda that is bad for Virginia, and he’ll have a very tough time selling voters on that record,” said Chris Bond, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Kaine has said he will not back away from the president or his record.
More recently, Republicans hit Kaine after the Center for Responsive Politics disclosed that the DNC accepted lobbyist donations while he was there despite an Obama directive not to. But those contributions totaled just $4,350 out of the $220 million Kaine helped the party raise in 2010 and the party is returning the money.
Allen, meanwhile, has his own ties to a town he often criticizes harshly.
The former U.S. senator — and one-time chairman of the party’s Senate campaign committee — is attending a Capitol Hill fundraiser this month hosted by Citizens United, the group whose Supreme Court victory last year cleared the way for unlimited, anonymous campaign donations from corporations and labor unions.
“It is completely laughable that George Allen would represent himself as anything but the emblem of D.C. insider,” said Matt Canter, a spokesman for the Democratic National Campaign Committee.
Regardless of the early sniping, the perception of D.C. — and Obama’s job approval a year and a half from now — could indeed tip the scales for Kaine one way or the other.
Former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder, notorious for tweaking fellow Democrats, said Kaine and Obama will have to work in harmony if both want to win the state next year.
“Not that they’re going to be joined at the hip,” Wilder said, “but it will be very difficult for Kaine to disagree on the issues, when you consider he was the head of the DNC and much of what he was parroting was what the Obama administration was speaking of.”
