Who Is Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's Vice President Choice? 'Boring,' Spanish Speaker, Harmonica Enthusiast

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., was the safe pick for Hillary Clinton's vice presidential running mate in November. Part of that safety is Kaine's low profile on the national stage. That has just changed — dramatically.

The pair took the stage together Saturday in Miami after the Democrat ticket was announced Friday night.

Kaine hails from an important toss-up state and offers his Spanish-speaking skills that would likely be a big asset in appealing to Hispanic voters on the campaign trail. Kaine made history in 2013 when he delivered a speech on immigration in Spanish on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Oh, and he's boring. Just ask him.

“I am boring,” Kaine told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd last month. “But boring is the fastest-growing demographic in this country.”

In a fundraising email to Democrats on Saturday, President Barack Obama offered a swift biography for Clinton's largely unknown running mate.

"He's the son of a teacher and an iron worker who's always got working families on his mind," Obama wrote of Kaine. "He spent nearly two decades and specialized in representing people who had been denied fair access to housing just because of what they looked like, or because they they had a disability. And when a gunman killed 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech, Tim knew he had a responsibility as governor to offer more than thoughts and prayers to the community he mourned with — and as a gun owner, he stood up to the gun lobby on their behalf."

• More at Patch: Hillary Clinton Picks Running Mate: Tim Kaine

Local, state, national experience

Kaine's political experience includes serving as a councilman and mayor in Richmond, lieutenant governor of Virginia and governor of Virginia (the Commonwealth is the only state that limits its governors to one term), and he is currently in his fourth year as the junior U.S. senator from Virginia.

During his tenure as governor, Kaine cut the state budget by more than 5 billion dollars, including a reduction in his own salary. He expanded early childhood and technical education, passed the largest bond package for higher education construction in Virginia history, reformed the state's mental health and foster care programs, reduced the infant mortality rate, protected open space and the Chesapeake Bay, banned smoking in bars and restaurants, and pushed major rail and public transit improvements throughout the state. Kaine also points out he brokered the deal to eliminate Virginia's estate tax and cut income taxes for thousands of low-income residents.

Timothy Michael Kaine, 58, an avid harmonica player who gets a kick out of playing bluegrass and gospel tunes, especially on family camping trips, lives in Richmond with his wife Anne and their three children, Woody, Annella and Nat. A former judge, Holton has the distinction of having lived twice in the governor's mansion: as a daughter to Republican Gov. Linwood Holton, who served from 1970-'74, and as first lady with then-Gov. Kaine.

Kaine won 52.8 percent of the vote in his last election in Virginia, in 2012, his first run for a U.S. Senate seat, against former U.S. Sen. George Allen, a Republican. Kaine won areas in Virginia that sometimes lean Republican, including Northern Virginia suburbs Loudoun and Prince William counties.

• More at Patch: Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Kaine Visits Jimmy's Tavern in Herndon

Kaine offered an early endorsement to Obama in 2008. He was a finalist for the veep position that would eventually go to Sen. Joe Biden. Speculation pinned the choice on foreign policy experience. After joining the senate in 2012, Kaine has served on the foreign policy and armed services committees.

Education is another topic Kaine has focused on. In the Senate, Kaine founded the Career and Technical Education Caucus. His wife, Anne Holton, was appointed by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe as the state's education secretary in 2014.

Again, Kaine offered an early endorsement to Clinton in this election cycle. He took the stage with Clinton on July 14 at an event in Northern Virginia, just as running-mate speculation was increasing.

"Do you want a 'You're fired!' president or a "You're hired!' president?'" Kaine asked the crowd. "Do you want a trash talker or a bridge builder?"

"I like that one a lot," Clinton said of Kaine's "trash talker" line. The rally ended with the two fist-bumping.

Hot-Button Issues: Energy, Abortion, Immigration

In an interview with Patch before he was elected to the U.S. Senate, Kaine laid out his views on a variety of hot-button issues.

On energy, Kaine said at the time he favors an “all-of-the-above” strategy for the short term that would include allowing exploratory drilling off the Virginia coast. For the longer term, he said, the emphasis should be on sources that emit little or no carbon.

Abortion, another perennial issue, prompted Kaine to say he has moral objections to it and supports restrictions, such as parental-consent laws and a prohibition on partial-birth abortions unless the life of the mother is in danger. And he said he is all for making abortions rarer through promotion of adoption and similar steps. Yet Kaine, a Catholic, said in in the interview he is not for criminalizing women if they choose abortion and didn’t think government has the right to interject itself in such decisions.

In a point that clearly separated Kaine from his opponent in the Senate race, Kaine noted that his opponent "believes abortion should be criminalized, and I do not."

When asked how that squares with his faith, Kaine reflected on how he had a good relationship with Virginia’s Catholic bishops while governor and couldn’t imagine they would want to criminalize such women, either.

Kaine talked seriously about his own Catholicism. “My faith is central to everything I do,” he said. “My faith position is a Good Samaritan position of trying to watch out for the other person.”

On an issue almost as divisive as abortion — immigration — Kaine told Patch then that he favored comprehensive reform, marked by stricter border security and making illegal immigrants already in the country acknowledge they committed a crime and pay stiff fines as a condition of entering a path to citizenship.

“People are looking for answers," Kaine said at the time. "They are looking for somebody who lays out a compelling vision.”

More on Kaine:

• Born: Feb. 26, 1958, in St. Paul, Minnesota; grew up in Kansas City
• Worst habit: Drinking Dr. Pepper
• Exercise: Every morning for 45 minutes
• TV: Watches mostly sports
• Favorite book/author: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy; one of his favorite authors is also George Orwell
• Favorite movie: Citizen Kane by Orson Welles
• Education: Rockhurst High School, a Catholic boys school in Kansas City; University of Missouri, B.A. in economics; Harvard Law School, Juris Doctor
• Languages other than English: Spanish (he spent a year doing missionary work in Honduras and has recorded campaign announcements in English and Spanish)

Greg Hambrick contributed to this report