Tim Kaine

Tim Kaine (born February 26, 1958, St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.) is an American politician who was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2012 and began representing Virginia in that body the following year. He previously served as governor of the state (2006–10). In 2016 he was selected by Hillary Clinton to serve as her vice presidential running mate in the presidential election. In 2024 Kaine won reelection in a close contest with Republican challenger Hung Cao.

Kaine grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, where his father had an ironworking shop. After studying economics (B.A., 1979) at the University of Missouri, he went to Harvard Law School (J.D., 1983), taking a year off to head a Jesuit technical school in Honduras. Kaine later moved to Richmond, Virginia, where he opened a legal practice specializing in housing rights for the poor and disabled. In 1984 he married Anne Holton—whose father, A. Linwood Holton, had served as governor of Virginia in 1970–74—and the couple later had three children. In 1987 Kaine also began teaching part-time at the University of Richmond School of Law.

Kaine entered electoral politics in 1994, when he was elected to Richmond’s city council. He then served as mayor of Richmond (1998–2001) before becoming lieutenant governor of Virginia (2002–06). In 2005 he ran for governor on a platform that highlighted his Roman Catholic faith and his willingness to pursue bipartisan compromise. He won the closely contested race and took office in 2006. Kaine was an early supporter of Sen. Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election, and he was widely believed to have been on the short list of vice presidential candidates. From 2009 to 2011 Kaine served as chair of the Democratic National Committee. In 2012 he ran for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Jim Webb. He narrowly defeated his Republican opponent, George Allen, the son of the popular Washington Redskins football coach of the same name. Kaine took office in 2013.

Kaine was a centrist Democrat, befitting a politician who was from a state that had a conservative rural sector in the south and west and liberal urban and suburban enclaves in the north and east. Virginia also had a large military presence, and Kaine took a strong interest in defense and veterans affairs issues, sponsoring legislation to help provide military personnel with useful training and credentialing for the civilian job market. In addition, he was at the forefront of numerous discussions on immigration policy.

On July 22, 2016, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presumptive presidential nominee, named Kaine as her running mate. Despite polling that showed the Clinton-Kaine ticket ahead throughout most of the final months of the campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump was elected president on November 8, 2016. Kaine retained his Senate seat, however, and he easily won reelection in 2018 and then again in 2024.