Senator Tim Kaine cruised to victory on election night, scoring one of the first victories of the evening.
Republican Corey Stewart promised to run a campaign against Senator Tim Kaine that was vicious, and he followed through by suggesting Kaine had been charged with sexual harassment — a claim that Stewart made repeatedly even though he had no evidence, a claim that Kaine says completely false.
Delivering his victory speech in Fairfax County Tuesday night, Kaine said Virginia voters showed who they are and who they are not. “You rejected the politics of peddling lies to try to get ahead," Kaine told them. "You rejected the politics and the economics of it’s about a few and not about all.”
Kaine said the racial divisions of the 2018 campaign harkened back to the dark days of massive resistance in Virginia. “You rejected in a very clear way in Virginia the politics of division and hatred. And you rejected it because we’ve been there. We’ve done that. We’ve got the scar tissue. We’re not going back,” Kaine said
Stewart won in Southwest Virginia and in the Shenandoah Valley. But Kaine won with 57 percent of the vote by running up the numbers in Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads.
Senator Mark Warner poked fun at Stewart’s campaign slogan: Take Back Virginia. “Back to what? Back for who? How long back? And tonight, Virginians in overwhelming margins rejected that vision and reelected our senator Tim Kaine.”
Kaine returns to a Senate that will remain in Republican hands. Warner will be up for reelection in 2020.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
