Why Kaine Is Different
RICHMOND -- Tim Kaine, who has been governor of Virginia for 37 days, is sometimes portrayed, especially outside the state, as junior partner and loyal successor to Mark Warner, as Warner moves on to the national stage.
That's true as far as it goes. Kaine ran for office last fall as the heir to Warner's brand of pragmatic politics, stressing sound management and moderate bipartisanship over ideology. He will cheerfully enlist in Warner's presidential campaign if Warner runs.
  Tim Kaine and Mark Warner last year. (By Steve Helber -- Associated Press)   |
But in some ways their differences are more interesting, and more relevant to Democrats nationally looking for ways to climb out of minority status.
Part of the difference is style. Warner was a smart and successful governor, but when he was elected in 2001 he had never held political office. He seemed to view every reporter's question as a potential trap, and to weigh every response for how it might blow up in his face. Often his most evident attribute was caution.
Kaine doesn't have Warner's polished looks or smile; after he delivered the Democratic response to the State of the Union address last month, much of the talk centered on his asymmetrical eyebrows. (Kaine says his staff Googled "Kaine and eyebrow" and got more than 30,000 hits.) But he talks policy with a rare fluency. Even his opponents note his down-to-earth genuineness. He seems to be having a good time.
There's a difference, too, in their brand of moderate politics -- a difference that was apparent in the election and becomes crucial now as Kaine tries to match Warner's success in coaxing action from a Republican-majority legislature.
Warner built an urban-rural coalition, tapping traditional Democrats while also winning alienated Democrats and marginal Republicans in southwest Virginia. He emphasized a cultural conservatism: NASCAR Democrat was the shorthand.
Kaine realized early that he couldn't afford Warner's strategy -- it costs a lot to reach such far-flung voters -- nor, most likely, emulate it. So he went for an urban-suburban appeal, and succeeded beyond his advisers' dreams. He polled better than 60 percent in Fairfax County, won similar suburban jurisdictions outside Richmond and Norfolk, and even carried "exurbs" -- such as Loudoun and Prince William counties -- where he had hoped only to narrow the Republican margin.
So it may not be surprising that Warner made his mark by persuading the General Assembly to increase funding for public schools -- an issue that resonates in Abingdon as much as in Arlington -- while Kaine is stressing, in his first year, the suburban nightmare issues of unchecked growth and traffic.
Kaine has a policy explanation for pairing land-use reform with increased support for roads and transit: It doesn't make sense to keep building roads without encouraging people to live closer to their jobs or to Metro.
But there's a political rationale, too. Traditionally, developers have favored new roads, while environmentalists have worked to kill them. Kaine's approach may at least neutralize the greens.
He still faces big obstacles in his effort to win a new stream of reliable funding for transportation from the General Assembly this year, even though what he's asking for is far short of what's needed after 20 years of the state ignoring the issue. Republicans in the House of Delegates are chagrined to have given Warner a political victory that has propelled his name onto lists alongside Hillary Clinton's; they don't want to repeat that mistake.
On the other hand, Kaine says, is the "visceral anger" of suburban voters watching their quality of life deteriorate. Some of them live in districts still represented by Republicans, who will be torn between their party's anti-tax commitment and their constituents' demands for improvements. Says one of the governor's aides: "At some point this thing evolves from a partisan issue to a local and regional issue."
Kaine says he wants to cooperate with Republicans and hopes for an outcome in which everyone can share the credit. He says, with some satisfaction, that Democratic Party leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Sen. Harry Reid (Nev.) weren't entirely pleased with his national address last month; his juxtaposition of bipartisanship in the provinces with the poisonous atmosphere in Washington "didn't sit well," he says.
But Kaine also flashes a kind of toughness that Reid or Pelosi might recognize. He appointed two Republicans to his Cabinet -- and the wife of his gubernatorial opponent as an agency head -- but also named one union-friendly liberal who has inflamed the GOP caucus.
If Republicans make good on threats to block that appointment, Kaine says, he will adjust accordingly his hitherto bipartisan approach to patronage jobs: "I've got three years and 11 months left in office." And when it is suggested that Warner would have shied away from such a confrontation so early, Kaine doesn't disagree. "I'm a different guy," he says, and then says it again. "I'm a different guy."
