Born in Minnesota in 1958, Tim Kaine began practicing law
in Richmond, Virginia, after graduating from Harvard Law School in
1983. He was voted to the Richmond City Council in 1994, marking the
start of a political ascent that eventually led to his election as
Virginia governor in 2005. Following a stint as chairman of the
Democratic National Party, Kaine was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012.
In 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton chose Kaine
as her vice presidential running mate.
Formative Years
Politician,
lawyer, Virginia governor and senator, Timothy Michael Kaine was born
on February 26, 1958, in St. Paul, Minnesota, but grew up in the area of
Kansas City, Missouri. The eldest son of an ironworker and a home
economics teacher, Kaine has noted he wasn't raised in an overtly
political household, but became drawn to matters of public interest
during the political and social upheaval of the 1960s.
Kaine
attended Rockhurst High School, an all-boys Jesuit high school, where he
joined spring mission drives to fund Jesuit activities in Honduras and
became student government president. He went on to the University of
Missouri, completing his bachelor's degree in economics in three years,
before entering Harvard Law School.
Kaine took a year off from
law school to volunteer with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras, where he
ran a small vocational school for teenage boys while honing his Spanish.
It was an eye-opening experience for the Midwesterner, who witnessed
the devastating effects of poverty up close, and ignited his
longstanding commitment to social justice.
Legal Career
After
earning his J.D. from Harvard in 1983, Tim Kaine moved to Richmond,
Virginia, to put his law degree to use. He made a name for himself early
in his career by taking on the appeal of a death row inmate named
Richard Lee Whitley. Although Whitley had confessed to sexually
assaulting and murdering a 63-year-old neighbor, Kaine was deeply
opposed to the death penalty, and his investigation into Whitley's
troubled background had spurred him to fight for the inmate.
Over
the course of 17 years as a practicing lawyer, Kaine specialized in
representing people who had been denied housing opportunities because of
their race or disability. Devoting much of his time to pro-bono work,
he helped found the Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness and was a
board member of the Virginia chapter of Housing Opportunities Made
Equal. Additionally, he taught legal ethics at the University of
Richmond Law School for six years.
Political Rise
Tim Kaine
entered politics in 1994 when he was elected to the Richmond City
Council. He served six years, including the last two as mayor when he
helped to create and implement the law known as Project Exile to reduce
gun-related violence. He was then elected Virginia's lieutenant governor
in 2001, a role in which he served as president of the Virginia
Senate.
When Kaine ran for governor in 2005 against Virginia
Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, he introduced himself as a leader guided
by his family and Catholic faith. He also urged his fellow religious
Democrats to talk about their faith in campaigns, saying "Voters want to
understand what motivates you." When Republicans attacked Kaine's
opposition to the death penalty, he responded with a TV ad in which he
explained that his religious beliefs led him to oppose capital
punishment, but that he would enforce the state's laws. Similarly,
although he was personally opposed to abortion, he felt obligated to
uphold its legality.
Virginia Governor and DNC Chairman
Tim
Kaine was inaugurated in Virginia's colonial capitol of Williamsburg as
the state's 70th governor on January 14, 2006. His star on the rise, he
was selected to give the Democratic response to President George W.
Bush's State of the Union address shortly afterward.
Battling
partisan gridlock during his term, Kaine cut social welfare programs to
balance the budget and invested in infrastructure development, but
otherwise struggled to push through major legislation. His national
profile continued to rise, however, as he was the first governor outside
Illinois to endorse Barack Obama for president. He was widely
considered a strong candidate to be picked as the Democratic
presidential nominee's running mate, before eventually losing out to
Delaware Senator Joe Biden.
Kaine became chairman of the
Democratic National Committee in 2009, and held on to the position
despite his party's significant losses in the 2010 midterm elections. He
stepped down in 2011 with the intention of campaigning for Jim Webb's
soon-to-be-vacated Virginia senate seat.
U.S. Senator
After
defeating former Virginia Senator and Governor George Allen in the 2012
campaign, Tim Kaine became the first senator to deliver a speech in
Spanish from the Senate floor.
Since being elected to his post,
Kaine has joined the Senate's Armed Services, Budget, Foreign Relations
and Aging Committees. Among his accomplishments, he introduced the Troop
Talent Act of 2013 to help servicemen and women transition to the
civilian workplace, and coauthored the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act
of 2015. Additionally, he is a founder and co-chair of the bipartisan
Career and Technical Education (CTE) Caucus, and has introduced
legislation to address issues of sexual assault and drug treatment.
On
July 22, 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
announced via text message to her supporters that she had selected Kaine
as her vice presidential running mate. She also tweeted the
announcement.
Personal
Kaine met his wife, Anne Holton, at
Harvard Law School. Named Virginia's secretary of education in January
2014, Anne is the daughter of former Republican Virginia Governor
Linwood Holton (1970-74), who desegregated the Commonwealth's public
schools.
The Kaines, who married on November 24, 1984, are
actively involved with Richmond's St. Elizabeth Catholic Church. They
have three children: Nat, Woody and Annella
