Tim Kaine has spent most of his adult life in politics. He was first elected to public office in 1994, serving on Richmond’s city council. Four years later he became mayor, and would then go on to be Virginia’s lieutenant governor and governor. He’s now in the U.S. Senate where he’s served since 2012.
Constituents find him thoughtful, likeable and always an optimist. He told worried students in Charlottesville that things will get better.
"I mean I think there will be some damage along the way and some challenges," he admits, "but I think we’re going to be okay."
While most Republicans in congress have fallen in line with presidential priorities, Kaine says many in the senate are reluctant.
"There are 53 Republicans in the senate, and my sense is one-third are blindly loyal to Donald Trump. They think what he says is right," he says. "Two-thirds, they are deeply skeptical about Donald Trump, and as he’s getting more and more discombobulated, giving speeches and going off on weird tangents about sharks or whatever, they’re more and more worried every day."
They continue to support him, Kaine explains, because they fear Trump will support different candidates in Republican primaries, and they will lose their job. That’s what happened to Bob Good, for example, in Virginia’s fifth congressional district. He endorsed Ron DeSantis for president, prompting Trump to back the current congressman, John McGuire.
Kaine added that some Republican lawmakers fear for their personal safety.
“If I cross him, he’ll tweet something out against me, and 20 million people will see it, and within that 20 million there are some nutty people who have guns or could do me harm.”
But he believes the economy will falter under Trump, making voters unhappy and leading members of congress to reconsider their support for the president.
“So the tariff chaos -- he ran on dropping prices. When families do back-to-school shopping this year, and then when families shop for Thanksgiving or Christmas, it’s going to be dramatically different than last year because of this tariff madness.”
Deadly flooding in Texas has caused people to question Trump administration cuts at the National Weather Service and FEMA. Polling also shows many voters have changed their thinking about the way the president has handled immigration.
“The American population is not for deportation of essential workers – the folks who are working with our parents in nursing homes, childcare or working in medical fields. The American public view on immigration is be tough on people who are doing bad things, but don’t be tough on people who are just trying to work.”
Students in the audience wondered if there was any point to getting involved, noting the power of money to control politicians. In response, Kaine shared his own story.
“Five years old, I come home, my mother is crying in front of the TV because JFK has been assassinated, and I picked up the newspaper on the driveway in April 1968. Martin Luther King had been assassinated. Bobby Kennedy has been assassinated. I turn on the news at night. Kids are getting hosed and guard dogs unleashed against them in civil rights protests. Kids are protesting against the Vietnam War. Young people are being killed in the Vietnam War. I was 16 when Nixon resigned in disgrace, so I concluded that adults had completely messed up the world. But, young people organized at the same time to change the voting age from 21 to 18. Young people protested against the Vietnam War. That’s one of the reasons the war came to an end. They forced Johnson not to run again. So the lesson that I drew from that was when young people are involved things get better.”
He can’t say how soon that might happen, but he’s got his own strategy as a member of the minority party in Congress -- using something called a privilege motion to introduce resolutions from the floor.
“No guarantee I’m going to win, but I make every Republican – do you own this, or do you disown this? Don’t tell me you’re concerned or that you kind of disagree, and if you would be President, you wouldn’t have done this. Vote on whether you think tariffs against Canada are a good idea. Vote on whether we should go to war with Iran without a vote of Congress. You’ve got to go on the record so your constituents can look and say, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
He’s now taken the floor five times.
“And I’m starting to get some Republicans to peel off.”
He hopes Virginia’s next governor will join him in pushing back against the Trump Administration, saying governors need to stand-up not suck-up.
