Former Virginia governor and U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine’s campaign is off and running, and he emphasizes his experience in the Old Dominion and touts the lessons the state can teach Washington on the economy, fiscal responsibility, and a sense of “balance and civility.”
“Washington’s got problems, and Virginia’s got solutions,” he said in an interview with WAVY-TV.
When asked whether his time as chairman of the Democratic National Committee would help or hurt him, Kaine said that it “might be a wash.” He presided over a tough 2010 midterm season for Democrats, but he was also on the job when the economy started to turn around.
(Republicans, meanwhile, are already working hard to tie Kaine to the president and national Democrats.)
Still, Kaine’s critics during his time at the helm of the DNC included former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder, who took to Politico to suggest that Kaine wasn’t the proper fit to chair the national party. But the former governor said that President Obama knew what he was getting when he asked him to take over the party.
“I got some grief for not being a fire-breathing, you know, rip Republicans’ throat out at every point, and you know when the president asked me to do the DNC job I said, ‘You know honestly…I’m not Howard Dean,” Kaine said. “He said, ‘Tim, I’m not asking you in spite of who you are, I’m asking because of who you are.’”
“What he was saying is the key, ultimately, we don’t do politics for politics’ sake, and we don’t even do politics for elections’ sake, we do politics for the results that we can try to produce in people’s lives,” he continued.
“The president said, ‘you have been a governor in the worst recession in 70 years, you helped your state to be best-managed state, best state for business, we’re going to have to do some things to get this economy moving again, and I need somebody who can help articulate that message,’” he said.
