Gov. Tim Kaine will endorse Barack Obama’s bid for president Saturday, the Illinois senator’s campaign told The Examiner on Thursday afternoon.
Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall would not comment on the endorsement because he did not want to preempt the governor’s announcement. Kaine is slated to publicly throw his support behind Obama shortly before the Virginia Democrats’ annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Richmond on Saturday, where Obama will deliver the event’s keynote address.
Kaine originally endorsed his predecessor, former Gov. Mark Warner, who bowed out of the race last year so he could spend more time with his family. Speculation on several Virginia political blogs Thursday indicated that Warner left the presidential race under pressure from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Bloggers also suggested Kaine’s endorsement of Obama is payback to Clinton’s camp for allegedly threatening to release negative information about Warner if he continued his campaign. Warner has not endorsed a Democratic presidential hopeful yet.
Clinton and Obama are widely considered to be by far the top contenders for the Democratic nomination. Virginia, which will hold its presidential primary next year, has not gone Democratic during a presidential race since 1964, when President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Texan, picked up the Old Dominion’s electoral votes. Recent Democratic victories in statewide elections, including Kaine’s win in 2005 and U.S. Sen. Jim Webb’s upset of George Allen last year, have Democrats hoping to reverse that trend in 2008. Virginia was also the first state to elect a black governor, putting Democrat L. Douglas Wilder in the executive mansion in the 1989 election.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said it is “doubtful” a Democrat could carry Virginia in the coming election but “not impossible if there is a big Democratic landslide nationally.” Of the two front-running candidates, he said, Obama is the more likely to win Virginia.
