Get the Party Started
In Williamsburg, Gov. Tim Kaine and His Democratic Crew Throw Down Some New Moves in the Old Dominion

By Marcia Davis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 15, 2006

WILLIAMSBURG, Jan. 14

Timothy M. Kaine knows how to party.

He can dance, he can play the harmonica and -- who knew? -- he can also sing.

He proved it Saturday night at his inaugural ball in Williamsburg when he jumped onstage to serenade the crowd with a version of "My Girl." So the truth is out. The new Democratic governor of Virginia is a ham.

He got the party started early, gliding across the floor with his wife, Anne Holton, who was wearing a floor-length burnished gold taffeta gown. He kissed her on the lips and then took his daughter for a spin.

This was the party that Democrats dreamed of. He had won a nasty race with 52 percent of the vote in a state where Republicans have long reigned. But Saturday night the dancing was a little more surefooted since Kaine, who followed Democrat Mark Warner into office, is building what they hope is a new party era.

In the stadium arena that normally holds about 10,000 people, the floor was filled with dancing revelers while two large screens on either side of the stage beamed images of Kaine and the entertainment that followed.

It was a high-energy party, with functional decor. Think basketball stadium turned into a ballroom, with strobe lighting, bunting hanging from rafters and rows of tables creatively squeezed into the arena seating. Down on the main floor, partyers stood around tables sipping cocktails and nibbling on fruits and cheeses, chicken satay and crab dip while several hundred bodies worked the dance floor.

Jane Tingley, of Arlington, was standing on the sideline, holding a pair of black heels. Turns out they belonged to her 15-year-old daughter, Sarah, who was wearing out her father, Russell Duncan, a few feet away on the dance floor. Duncan was a classmate of Kaine's at Harvard Law School.

"It's an exciting party. You can sense the enthusiasm and the excitement," said Tingley. "I liked what he said about courage and community today at the inauguration and I want to go back home and put it into action."

The governor didn't hang around long at the Kaplan Arena on the campus of the College of William & Mary. He had to get to another ball in Richmond. But he certainly left an impression.

"He sings very well," said Judith Morroy, part of a Northern Virginia world music band, the Constituents, who also played Friday night in the arena for an inaugural weekend concert.

"He sings better than I expected," she said.

Earlier Saturday, Kaine spoke at his inauguration of an inclusive Virginia, one that would build on "courage, opportunity and community" and understand the need for "reconciliation and brotherhood."

It was difficult to envision just how this will unfold for Kaine, who will have to contend with a Republican majority in the General Assembly. His speech spoke of bipartisanship, but the reality is that Republicans were holding their own inaugural celebrations for Lt. Gov. William Bolling in Richmond this weekend.

Still, Kaine showed his supporters that he knows how to enjoy the moment. That was especially true Friday night when the opening celebration included a concert headlined by the Beach Boys in Kaplan Arena. There were Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry reenactors belting out "Barbara Ann" onstage with the Beach Boys, a black male gospel choir, a group of young'un rappers and a bluegrass group, No Speed Limit, which Kaine loves.

By the end of the night, Kaine, 47, was also on that stage lined up like everyone else singing, "Barbarbarbarbarbarbra Ann, Barbara Annnn." So were his wife and young daughter, who had staked out their own territory and were singing and hopping around hand in hand, alternating between joyful abandon and halfway successful efforts to coordinate their movements.

It was a night of hopeful inclusion. Virginia, after all, was once the home of the Confederacy. A place that was once a Democratic stronghold when Democrat meant segregation and racist terror. The Virginia of this governor -- who delivered part of his inaugural speech in Spanish -- is one of broad diversity. And his party reflected that. It had black rappers, gospel singers and the Constituents, who spiced up everything from pop to R&B with a Latin beat.

The night blended old, old, old Virginia with the present when "Jefferson" and "Henry" delivered inspiring words about the "Promise of Virginia." And in case you might have forgotten this was what the night was all about, the words were scripted on the mega-tron screens hanging on each side of the stage.

Can Kaine really do it? Kathy Ford, who lives in Williamsburg and works for a cosmetics company and who grew up to Beach Boys tunes, was sure of the answer by the time she was leaving the concert.

"I definitely do [think so], especially after tonight!" said Ford. "There was so much enthusiasm."

Maybe, one person after another said, Kaine would be able to build on what Warner had started: economic development and pushing Virginia's schools forward and getting closer to solving the transportation problems of the state.

Twenty-year-olds Ben Boone and Meg Eason danced in the aisles. They love the classics and came back early from winter break to be at the concert. They are both juniors at William & Mary, and both voted for Kaine, too. They both liked Kaine's platform, especially on higher education, said Eason, a pre-med student. "I think he's going to build off the stuff that Warner had accomplished," said Boone, who's majoring in Latin American studies.

But Virginia still seems to be a place where being a Democrat remains somewhat of an oddity. There are those like Ford, who said she votes for the man, not the party. But she voted for Warner and Kaine. "I believe he's a genuine man," she said.

Maybe he could build a bridge between the Red and the Blue. Build the ranks of a sensible middle.

It was a night of hopes -- one in which those big screens flashed the testimonials of all kinds of Virginians -- young, old, black, Latino, white -- talking about the good life in Old Dominion. You got the feeling at that concert that it was the kind of place where any sign of the old Confederacy, a flag on a T-shirt or cap, might have set off the metal detectors that everyone had to pass through, which they did quietly and patiently, even as the crowds bottle-necked in good-natured chaos entering the arena.

It was a night in which the Hood Temple AME Zion Church Male Chorus could perform an inspiring rendition of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" -- the song of the Union army -- segue into "America the Beautiful," which spurred the crowd to its feet, and finish with lines from the African American anthem "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

It was then that Kaine was brought onstage by the night's emcee, Rex Ellis, vice president of the Historic Area at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Kaine, who'd come in with his wife and three children shortly before 8 p.m. in his dark suit, white shirt and red tie, had long ago shed his jacket and bounded onto the stage.

To the catalogue of political moves -- the baby kiss, the handshake and simultaneous hand-on-shoulder move, the Clintonian crowd-wave, talking to six people at once -- add the bounding-up-the-stairs move. It is part of the youthful political repertoire of which Kaine is a master.

But Kaine didn't spend a lot of time with political speeches Friday night, moving quickly to introduce the Beach Boys.

Kathy Ford found something hopeful in it all. She'd waited all night to hear her Beach Boys. A petite middle-age woman with a pixie haircut, dark slacks and makeup most skillfully applied, she had sat for much of the night like a statue. Nothing moved. Not when Kaine was on his harmonica with No Speed Limit on "Will the Circle Be Unbroken"; not when gospel singers blew away one song after another; and when time came for the performance of In God's Image, a group of four young African Americans from Richmond, in their baggy shirts and jeans and long gold ropes, Ford's alabaster pose seemed to stiffen.

But after Kaine introduced the Beach Boys, who with a great sense of self-awareness poked fun at themselves and their ages -- they might be better known as the Beach Granddads -- Ford truly came alive. She was on her feet clapping and swaying and bobbing her head.

It was a new day in Virginia, where the old and the new blended. And for a moment, inside that bubble, it was a night and a weekend to believe in such things.