page_title: Tim Kaine
section_title: 2005 gubernatorial election
hierarchical_section_title: Tim Kaine / 2005 gubernatorial election
caption_attribution_description: English: Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine at the Buena Vista Labor Day Parade. Notice that he is wearing a sticker supporting Jim Webb's senatorial campaign.
context_page_description: Timothy Michael Kaine is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Virginia since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 38th lieutenant governor of Virginia from 2002 to 2006 and 70th governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010. Kaine was the Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 2016 election as the running mate of Hillary Clinton.
  Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Kaine grew up in Overland Park, Kansas, graduated from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri and earned a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School before entering private practice and becoming a lecturer at the University of Richmond School of Law. He was first elected to public office in 1994, when he won a seat on the Richmond City Council. He was then elected Mayor of Richmond in 1998 and was in that position until being elected Lieutenant Governor of Virginia in 2001. Kaine was elected Governor of Virginia in 2005 and was in that office from 2006 to 2010. He was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2009 to 2011.
context_section_description: In 2005, Kaine ran for governor of Virginia against Republican candidate Jerry W. Kilgore, a former state attorney general. Kaine was considered an underdog for most of the race, trailing in polls for most of the election. Two polls released in September 2005 showed Kaine trailing Kilgore—by four percentage points in a Washington Post poll and by one percentage point in a Mason-Dixon/Roanoke Times poll. The final opinion polls of the race before the November election showed Kaine slightly edging ahead of Kilgore.
  Kaine ultimately prevailed, winning 1,025,942 votes (51.7%) to Kilgore's 912,327 (46.0%). A third candidate, independent state Senator H. Russell Potts Jr., ran as an "independent Republican"—and received 43,953 votes (2.2%).
  Kaine emphasized fiscal responsibility and a centrist message. He expressed support for controlling sprawl and tackling longstanding traffic issues, an issue that resonated in the exurbs of northern Virginia. He benefited from his association with the popular outgoing Democratic governor, Mark Warner, who had performed well in traditionally Republican areas of the state. On the campaign trail, Kaine referred to the "Warner-Kaine administration" in speeches and received the strong backing of Warner. Kilgore later attributed his defeat to Warner's high popularity and the Republican president George W. Bush's sharply declining popularity; Bush held a rally with Kilgore on the campaign's final day.
  The campaign turned sharply negative in its final weeks, with Kilgore running television attack ads that claimed, incorrectly, that Kaine believed that "Hitler doesn't qualify for the death penalty." The ads also attacked Kaine for his service ten years earlier as a court-appointed attorney for a death-row inmate. The Republican ad was denounced by the editorial boards of the Washington Post and a number of Virginia newspapers as a "smear" and "dishonest." Kaine responded with an ad "in which he told voters that he opposes capital punishment but would take an oath and enforce the death penalty. In later polls, voters said they believed Kaine's response and were angered by Kilgore's negative ads."
  In the election, Kaine won by large margins in the Democratic strongholds such as Richmond and Northern Virginia's inner suburbs (such as Alexandria and Arlington), as well as in the Democratic-trending Fairfax County. Kaine also won Republican-leaning areas in Northern Virginia's outer suburbs, including Prince William County and Loudoun County, where George W. Bush had beat John Kerry in the previous year's presidential election, and performed "surprisingly well in Republican strongholds like Virginia Beach and Chesapeake." Kaine also defeated Kilgore in the burgeoning Richmond suburbs. Kilgore led in southwest Virginia and in the Shenandoah Valley.
caption: Kaine at the Covington
  Labor Day Parade in Virginia, September 4, 2006
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