Kaine to Hold Town Meetings on Transportation

RICHMOND, Nov. 9 -- Virginia's newly elected Democratic governor, Timothy M. Kaine, announced plans Wednesday to hold a series of town meetings on transportation and expressed his support for widening I-66 inside the Beltway and for building rail transit to Dulles International Airport.

In his first news conference since Tuesday's election, Kaine said he would hold at least five town meetings beginning next week in Manassas, some two months before his inauguration. Other town hall meetings will be held in Roanoke, Bristol, Newport News and Henrico County, he said.

Kaine, currently Virginia's lieutenant governor, also said he believes that I-66 could be widened in one direction without having to expropriate property. He said he would appoint a professional to recommend the best way to bring public transit to the airport at Dulles.

"There's no way Dulles can be all it can be without rail to Dulles," he said.

The outgoing administration of Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) has advanced plans to widen outbound I-66 inside the Beltway and build rail to Dulles -- plans that Kaine has supported.

Kaine's initial focus on transportation addresses an issue that was one of the pillars of his campaign.

His campaign Web site says he advocates "continuing to seek creative public-private partnerships" to allow the state to "kick-start important projects like widening I-66 west of the Beltway" and other transportation improvements. It says he also "supports extending Metro rail to Dulles Airport, connecting Virginia's largest airport to businesses in Northern Virginia and Washington, and to Fort Belvoir to help accommodate the large increase in defense-related jobs that are to be relocated there."

Kaine's news conference was held in the Marriott Hotel in Richmond, where he had addressed jubilant supporters only 11 hours earlier.

Kaine, 47, defeated Republican former attorney general Jerry W. Kilgore, 44, by 52 percent to 46 percent, according to unofficial results issued by the State Board of Elections. Independent candidate H. Russell Potts Jr., a Republican state senator from Winchester, finished a distant third with 2 percent of the votes. Turnout among Virginia's 4.4 million voters was 44 percent.

While Kaine scored a decisive victory, capitalizing in part on the popularity of outgoing Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) and dissatisfaction with the Bush administration, Republicans won the contest for lieutenant governor and retained their majority in the House of Delegates. A race for attorney general remained too close to call Wednesday, with Republican Robert F. McDonnell narrowly leading Democrat R. Creigh Deeds by about 2,000 votes out of more than 1.9 million cast. Deeds said he would seek a recount.

Kaine declined to spend much time at his news conference analyzing his victory over Kilgore, a former state and federal prosecutor whose final pre-election rally was attended by President Bush. The governor-elect sidestepped questions about whether his win signified a blow to the conservative right or whether it holds lessons relevant to Democratic candidates in other states.

The only message from voters that Kaine said came through was a rejection of the negative advertising used by his opponent.