Tim Kaine

Some Lesser Known Facts About Tim Kaine

• Tim Kaine is a Democrat veteran who has served at nearly every level of government – as a Mayor, Governor, and Senator.

• He is known for his scandal-free political life.

• He grew up in Kansas City, where he worked in his father’s ironworking shop

• After graduating from the University of Missouri, he started running a technical school founded by Jesuit missionaries in Honduras, where he trained teenagers to become carpenters, welders, and other technicians.

  

• Tim later practiced law for 17 years in Richmond and represented people who had been denied housing because of their disability or race.

• In 1980, during a year off from law school, he learned Spanish while living in Honduras.

  

• His nine months volunteering in Honduras inspired him to write a poem titled “Still Life.”

• He met his wife, Anne Holton, at Harvard Law School, where they were in the same study group; she was a moderate Republican at the time.

• After marriage, Tim and Anne settled in Richmond and joined St. Elizabeth, a mostly black Roman Catholic church.

• According to Tim Kaine, he had an apolitical childhood, and it was his wife’s family that influenced his interest in politics. Attending Richmond City Council meetings also inspired him to pursue politics. He later served the city council four terms including the last two terms as Mayor of Richmond.

• From 1987 to 1993, he taught legal ethics at the University of Richmond School of Law.

• In 1998, Tim Kaine created history by winning one of the largest civil rights jury verdicts ever in a discrimination case against minorities (African Americans) by an insurance company. He won a $100.5 million verdict in a redlining case against Nationwide Insurance.

• In July 1998, he became the first white Mayor of Richmond in more than ten years.

  

• As the Richmond Mayor, he was credited for an increase in housing renovation in the city by supporting a tax abatement program.
• During his tenure as Richmond mayor, the city saw a reduction in the city’s crime rate, tax cuts, and the construction of its first new schools. As the mayor of Richmond, he also played a significant role in bridging the city’s racial divide.

• During his mayoral term, he was named one of “the 10 best cities in America to do business” by Forbes.
• In 2001, Tim Kaine became Virginia’s lieutenant governor after Emily Couric, a state senator and the sister of the television newswoman Katie Couric, opted out of the race after she discovered she had pancreatic cancer.

• While he was serving as Virginia’s governor, the state witnessed a deadly mass shooting in 2007 in which 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech University by a deranged student. Following the incident, Tim Kaine started heavily advocating for gun control legislation.

  

• Although he didn’t favour capital punishment, he allowed 11 executions to proceed as Governor of Virginia.

• In the 2008 Presidential Election, he was considered one of the most probable running mates for Barack Obama.

  

• In 2013, Tim Kaine became the first Senator to give a speech on the Senate floor in a language that was not English. He spoke in Spanish for almost 13 minutes, advocating for an immigration bill crafted by the bipartisan “Gang of Eight.”

• In 2015, he supported the normalization of U.S.–Cuban relations and co-sponsored the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act.

• In the 2016 US Presidential Election, he was chosen as the running-mate for Hillary Clinton.

  

• On 5 January 2022, he shared a photo of his car, revealing that he was among hundreds of drivers who were stranded on Interstate 95 on 4 January 2022 for almost 27 hours after a snowstorm caused extreme delays.

• Tim Kaine considers himself a “traditional Catholic,” and he opposes abortion.

• He is a harmonica enthusiast and often carries multiple harmonicas in his briefcase. He has even played the instrument with members of the Dave Matthews Band and the Grateful Dead. He once joked about this skill and said,
  

  In politics you’ve got to have a fallback in our line of work because your career can be over in an instant.”

  

• According to Tim Kaine, he first picked up the harmonica in seventh grade after becoming inspired by a friend who had been bringing his harmonica around.

• He loves consuming beer on various occasions.