Richmond, VA — This morning, Senator Kaine earned the endorsement of the Washington Post Editorial Board, calling him a “model senator,” “political workhorse” and a “credit to Virginia.”
The Post praises Senator Kaine’s work across the aisle, from his legislation to protect reproductive health to his legislation standing up to presidents of both parties to authorize the use of force through Congress.
The Post lauds Senator Kaine a “credit to Virginia and a valuable player in the U.S. Senate,” arguing he deserves six more years.
Read the endorsement editorial below:
Washington Post: The Post endorses Tim Kaine for U.S. Senate in Virginia
September 23, 2024
- Serious and substantive senators from both parties have decided to retire in recent years, leaving the self-styled “world’s greatest deliberative body” unduly populated with political showhorses. Fortunately for Virginia, and the Senate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D) is seeking a third term. Mr. Kaine is a political workhorse: earnest, even-keeled, decent and constructive. In-person early voting began Friday across the commonwealth, and he has our endorsement.
- To be sure, the Republican challenger, retired Navy captain Hung Cao, has an admirable personal story: the 53-year-old arrived in the United States in 1975 as a refugee from Vietnam and eventually chose a military career, serving with Special Operations units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He lost a House bid two years ago.
- But Mr. Cao lacks the temperament and pragmatism to be effective in the Senate and his ideology is out of sync with the increasingly moderate state he seeks to represent. Mr. Cao has described himself as “MAGA” and part of the “Trump America First camp.” He has compared President Joe Biden to Communist leaders in Vietnam. He pronounced himself “thrilled” about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
- Mr. Kaine, by contrast, is a seasoned public servant. He started out as a civil rights lawyer before becoming a city councilman and mayor of Richmond, lieutenant governor and governor of Virginia, chairman of the Democratic National Committee and his party’s nominee for vice president in 2016.
- Though he’s an unabashed Democratic partisan, in the Senate he has worked productively across the aisle. He partnered with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a fellow Catholic, to try to protect abortion rights after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Alongside Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), he has stood up to presidents of both parties by demanding that Congress authorize the use of military force, instead of abdicating that constitutional responsibility to the executive branch. Last year, the Senate passed his bill to repeal the 21-year-old Iraq War reauthorization with 66 votes. Before Sen. JD Vance joined Donald Trump’s ticket, Mr. Kaine was negotiating with the Ohio Republican on a proposal to eliminate health insurance co-pays for childbirth.
- The father of a Marine veteran, Mr. Kaine has pushed bills to reduce military spouse unemployment and remove barriers to maternal and postpartum mental health care in the military. Mr. Kaine also made it easier for service members to access mental health help confidentially. The law is named for Brandon Caserta, who died by suicide in 2018 while stationed in Norfolk.
- Though he’s now 66, Mr. Kaine still has plenty of energy. This spring, he published a book called “Walk Ride Paddle: A Life Outside” about his experiences completing what he dubbed the Virginia Nature Triathlon: hiking all 559 miles of the Appalachian Trail in the state, biking the 321-mile length of the Blue Ridge Parkway and kayaking the James River from the Allegheny Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay. Frustrated by the increasingly bitter tone of politics, he considered not seeking a third term, but a Bible verse resonated with him: “Do not grow weary in doing good. You will reap a great harvest if you do not give up.”
- Mr. Kaine’s Senate seniority is valuable for Virginia. As chairman of the seapower subcommittee on Armed Services, Mr. Kaine is helping rethink the Navy’s flexible force structure — not just carrier groups, but unmanned vessels on the surface and underwater — as U.S. strategy shifts toward the Indo-Pacific and countering China. As chairman of the Americas subcommittee on Foreign Relations, he’s trying to get Washington to pay more sustained attention to the retreat of democracy in Latin America. (He took a year off from Harvard Law School to be a Christian missionary in Honduras.) On the Budget Committee, he’s working to devise a debt management policy that makes more sense, and leads to less brinkmanship, than the current law which requires periodic votes to raise the debt ceiling.
- Mr. Kaine is a credit to Virginia and a valuable player in the Senate. He deserves six more years.
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