Timothy Michael Kaine ( KAYN; born February 26, 1958) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Virginia, a seat he has held since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he served from 2006 to 2010 as the 70th governor of Virginia and from 2002 to 2006 as the 38th lieutenant governor of Virginia. Kaine was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in the 2016 presidential election, running alongside presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Kaine grew up in Overland Park, Kansas. He graduated from the University of Missouri and earned a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. Afterward, he entered private practice and became a lecturer at the University of Richmond School of Law. He was first elected to public office in 1994, when he won a seat on the Richmond city council. He was elected mayor of Richmond in 1998, holding that position until being elected lieutenant governor of Virginia in 2001.
Kaine was elected governor of Virginia in 2005 and held that office from 2006 to 2010. He chaired the Democratic National Committee from 2009 to 2011. In 2012, Kaine was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating former Virginia governor and senator George Allen. He was reelected to a second term by a wide margin in 2018, defeating Republican nominee Corey Stewart, and to a third term in 2024, defeating Republican nominee Hung Cao.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton selected Kaine as her running mate in that year's presidential election. While winning a plurality of the national popular vote, their ticket lost the Electoral College, and therefore the general election, to the Republican ticket of Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
Kaine was born at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is the eldest of three sons born to Mary Kathleen (née Burns), a home economics teacher, and Albert Alexander Kaine Jr., a welder and the owner of a small iron-working shop. He was raised Catholic. One of Kaine's great-grandparents was Scottish and the other seven were Irish. Kaine's family moved to Overland Park, Kansas, when Kaine was two years old, and he grew up in the Kansas City area. In 1976, he graduated from Rockhurst High School, a Jesuit all-boys preparatory school in Kansas City, Missouri. At Rockhurst, Kaine joined the debate team and was elected student body president.
Kaine received his Bachelor of Arts in economics from the University of Missouri in 1979, completing his degree in three years and graduating Omicron Delta Kappa and summa cum laude. He was a Coro Foundation fellow in Kansas City in 1978. He entered Harvard Law School in 1979, interrupting his law studies after his first year to work in Honduras for nine months from 1980 to 1981, helping Jesuit missionaries who ran a Catholic school in El Progreso. While running a vocational center that taught carpentry and welding, he also helped increase the school's enrollment by recruiting local villagers. Kaine is fluent in Spanish as a result of his time in Honduras.
After returning from Honduras, Kaine met his future wife, first-year Harvard Law student Anne Holton. He graduated from Harvard Law School with a J.D. degree in 1983. Kaine and Holton moved to Holton's hometown of Richmond, Virginia, after graduation, and Kaine was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1984.
Legal career and Richmond City Council
After graduating from law school, Kaine was a law clerk for Judge R. Lanier Anderson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in Macon, Georgia. He then joined the Richmond law firm of Little, Parsley & Cluverius, P.C. In 1987, Kaine became a director of the law firm of Mezzullo & McCandlish, P.C. He practiced law in Richmond for 17 years, specializing in fair housing law and representing clients discriminated against on the basis of race or disability. He was a board member of the Virginia chapter of Housing Opportunities Made Equal, which he represented in a landmark redlining discrimination lawsuit against Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. arising from the company's practices in Richmond. Kaine won a $100.5 million verdict in the case; the judgment was overturned on appeal, and Kaine and his colleagues negotiated a $17.5 million settlement.
Kaine did regular pro bono work. In 1988, he started teaching legal ethics as an adjunct professor at the University of Richmond School of Law. Kaine taught at the University of Richmond for six years; his students included future Virginia attorney general Mark Herring. He was a founding member of the Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness.
Kaine had a largely apolitical childhood, but he became interested in politics in part due to the influence of his wife's family and his experience attending Richmond city council meetings. In 1994, he was elected the 2nd district member of the city council of the independent city of Richmond, defeating incumbent city councilor Benjamin P.A. Warthen by 97 votes. He took his seat on July 1 and retained the position until September 10, 2001, when he resigned; William J. Pantele was appointed to succeed him. Kaine spent four terms on the city council, the latter two as mayor of Richmond.
On July 1, 1998, Kaine was elected mayor of Richmond, succeeding Larry Chavis. The majority-black Richmond City Council chose him by an 8 to 1 vote, making him the city's first white mayor in more than ten years, which was viewed as a surprise. Rudy McCollum, an African American city councilor also interested in the mayoralty, decided to back Kaine after a private meeting between the two, clearing the way for him. Previous mayors had treated the role as primarily ceremonial, with the city manager effectively operating the city; Kaine treated it as a full-time job, taking a more hands-on role.
As mayor, Kaine used a sale-leaseback arrangement to obtain funds to renovate the historic Maggie L. Walker High School and reopen it in 2000 as a magnet governor's school, the Maggie L. Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies, which "now serves the top students in Central Virginia". Three elementary schools and one middle school were also built in Richmond under Kaine. Along with Commonwealth's attorney David Hicks, U.S. attorney James Comey, and police chief Jerry Oliver, Kaine supported Project Exile, an initiative that shifted gun crimes to federal court, where defendants faced harsher sentences. Though controversial, the effort gained widespread support and the city's homicide rate fell by 55% during Kaine's mayoralty. Kaine touted Project Exile during his 2001 campaign for lieutenant governor.
On several occasions, Kaine voted against tax increases, and he supported a tax abatement program for renovated buildings, which was credited for a housing renovation boom in the city. Forbes magazine named Richmond one of "the 10 best cities in America to do business" during Kaine's term.
According to John Moeser, a professor emeritus of urban studies and planning at Virginia Commonwealth University and later a visiting fellow at the University of Richmond's Center for Civic Engagement, Kaine "was energetic, charismatic and, most important, spoke openly about his commitment to racial reconciliation in Richmond." The New York Times wrote that Kaine "was by all accounts instrumental in bridging the city's racial divide". In the early part of his term, Kaine apologized for Richmond's role in slavery; the apology was generally well received as "a genuine, heartfelt expression". In the latter part of his term, there was a contentious debate over the inclusion of a portrait of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in a set of historic murals to be placed on city floodwalls. Many African Americans were outraged that Lee would appear on city walls, while Southern heritage groups demanded that the picture remain. Kaine proposed a compromise whereby Lee would appear as part of a series of murals that also included figures like Abraham Lincoln and Powhatan Beaty. The NAACP criticized his stance, but Kaine argued that placing Lee on the floodwall made sense in context, and that "Much of our history is not pleasant; you can't whitewash it." His proposal passed the council by a 6–3 vote.