Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on Friday announced Tim Kaine as her vice presidential running mate.
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If Kaine was selected for the ticket, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat and ally of the Clintons, would choose a temporary replacement, but the race for the remainder of Kaine’s term would take place in 2017, raising the possibility that Republicans could win the seat.
Joining Clinton at a rally in the battleground state of Florida, the bilingual Kaine peppered Spanish-language phrases into a speech focused heavily on introducing himself to voters unfamiliar with the low-key USA senator from Virginia.
“When Donald Trump says he has your back, you better watch out”, Kaine said, with Clinton sitting at his side nodding.
SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty ImagesUS Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a campaign rally with US Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, at Ernst Community Cultural Center in Annandale, Virginia, July 14, 2016. “As I’ve often said, if I’m good at anything in public life, it’s good because I started at the local level listening to people, learning about their lives and trying to find consensus to solve problems”.
Kaine beat out Senator Elizabeth Warren and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for Clinton’s vice presidential pick. “Philly fight?” Trump said on Twitter on Saturday. Kaine could help Clinton woo moderate voters who have been turned off by Trump’s provocative rhetoric.
“My running mate is a man who doesn’t just share those values”, Clinton said of Kaine. Clinton ultimately concluded that she had “unshakeable confidence in Kaine’s readiness to do the job”, according to a Clinton aide familiar with her thinking.
“I alone can fix it. he’s not only wrong, he’s dangerously wrong”, she said.
Wikileaks has posted emails that including several denunciations of Clinton’s primary rival, Bernie Sanders, and his supporters.
Trump alleged that Kaine that took hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts while Governor of Virginia. Tim Kaine, to a Miami audience Saturday as “a progressive who likes to get things done”.
She said she’s bothered by Kaine’s association with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a global trade pact that Sanders and Clinton oppose.
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Speaking to CNN’s “State of the Union”, Sanders acknowledged that he and Kaine were not always ideologically in symmetry. She said “you have helped shape us” and that she and her husband “will really need your prayers”. “We’re going to be “compañeros de alma, ‘ in this great ‘lucha” ahead”, he said, or “soul mates in this great fight ahead”. His selection completes the line-up for the general election. “From Atlantic City to his so-called university, he leaves a trail of broken promises and wrecked lives wherever he goes”, Kaine told the crowd at Florida International University. The son of an ironworker, he is a Roman Catholic and spent a year running a technical school founded by Jesuit missionaries in Honduras during a break from college.
