(RNN) – Hillary Clinton has chosen Virginia Sen. “I’m honored to be her running mate”, Kaine said in a tweet tonight.
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The announcement comes ahead of Ms Clinton being formally elected as the Democratic presidential nominee at the party’s national convention in Philadelphia next week.
Before becoming a USA senator, Kaine was governor of Virginia, a key swing state in November. He was elected governor of Virginia in 2005 and for almost the last three years has served as a Virginia senator, sitting on both the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees.
Picking Kaine would presumably help Clinton firm up Virginia in November.
He also supported Clinton early in the 2016 race, saying as far back as 2014 that the former secretary of state should be the next president.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of MA, a leader of the party’s progressive wing, had also been floated as a possibility and campaigned with Clinton after she secured the delegates necessary for the party’s nomination.
There has always been speculation about whom Clinton would choose, with a vocal movement (at least on Twitter) hoping she would select Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to round out an extremely liberal (and all-female!) ticket. Elizabeth Warren or Ohio Sen.
But after Donald Trump’s star-turn acceptance speech at the Republican convention Thursday night, Clinton isn’t taking any chances.
However, the choice of Kaine will allow Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe to pick his replacement in the Senate if the Clinton-Kaine ticket wins, potentially helping Democrats take control of the chamber.
While Kaine is not a minority, supporters say it’s a plus that he speaks Spanish – a language he learned during a mission trip to Honduras while in law school. The couple has three children.
Democrats offered a different assessment of the state of the nation.
In selecting the battleground of Florida to make her announcement, Clinton is hoping to seize the spotlight from Republicans after their convention in Cleveland. Obama said Friday that Trump painted a picture that “doesn’t really jibe with the experience with most people”.
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Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, wrote on Twitter that he “bolsters an already historic campaign” and that Kaine had supported marriage equality and other LGBTQ issues. “Do you want a trash-talking president or a bridge-building president?”
