Catching up with Tim Kaine

Freezing rain spits down on an overcast January morning as Tim Kaine steps out of the car and heads across the street for his weekly briefing.

There is much to discuss — though perhaps not what you'd expect from a former Virginia governor and current chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

"Coffee, Tim?" asks Susie Joynes, the waitress at the City Diner, as Kaine, the first of a regular group of fiftysomething North Richmond neighborhood buddies to arrive, settles into a corner booth of the Broad Street eatery.

Soon, others show up — Frank Driggs, the owner of Import Autohaus, and Mark Askin, the parks chief in Chesterfield County. Life's big issues are on the table: family, health, sports and, as always, the kids.

"We don't talk much about politics," says Kaine, a bit rumpled and casually dressed like the rest of the crew, which usually includes Verizon lobbyist John Knapp, attorney Harris Butler and Kaine's former counsel, Mark Rubin.

"Everyone is someone I knew before I was in politics."

They all order the special — $3.79. Kaine takes his coffee black, his eggs over easy.

A little later, he'll hop back into the family's clean diesel Volkswagen Jetta and head home to Laburnum Park to suit up for the weekly commute north to Washington and a decidedly hard-boiled day job — running the Democratic Party and promoting the agenda of his boss, President Barack Obama.

It's a couple of days after the Tucson, Ariz., shootings of 19 people, of whom six died and 13 were wounded, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz. Before Kaine leaves, Joynes takes him aside and whispers in his ear: "You be careful."

"He was the first person I thought of," Joynes says later. "I'm a raging Republican, and I adore him."

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Virginia governors have traveled different paths upon completing their four-year terms. Some, like Mark R. Warner, now in the U.S. Senate, stay in politics and keep running, perhaps entertaining ambitions of higher office. Others, like Gerald L. Baliles, pursue the public interest through the private sector by joining law firms or entering academia.

But a year removed from the Executive Mansion, the 52-year-old Kaine is traveling down both roads — Average Tim at home and high-powered Washington politico on the rubber-chicken fundraising circuit. Both roles, he says, suit him for this time in his life.

"I do what I'm inspired to do," he says, during a drive to the DNC in Washington.

"If I had gone to a university or something else and just immediately gone cold turkey on politics, I can see now that would have been hard. Now I'm working in a very intensely political job, but when I'm in my hometown I'm just a dad, husband, neighbor, teacher, friend and that's what I do," he adds. "And I really like that."

Part of Kaine's civilian existence involves not bringing his former influence to bear on Virginia politics.

"It would have to be a major issue for me to speak out," he says. "My plate is more than full. I've certainly witnessed in City Hall and state government the specter of the former official who doesn't know how to let go. I don't want to be that guy."

Despite being on the road 150 to 200 nights last year as DNC chairman, Kaine said life after the Executive Mansion has allowed him to spend more time with family.

For the first time in years, there were no official duties on Christmas Day. And this month, Kaine, an avid outdoorsman, and his oldest son, Nat, went camping to celebrate Nat's 21st birthday.

He has had the chance to go canoeing on the York River with his wife, Anne Holton, a former judge and an advocate for foster-care reform. He has gone to basketball games with son Woody, 18, now a freshman at the University of Virginia. And he has sampled Richmond's theater scene with his daughter, Annella, 15, a sophomore at the Appomattox Regional Governor's School. During the summer, Kaine and his diner buddies hiked around Mont Blanc in Switzerland, Italy and France.

Gone is the entourage and police escort. Trips to get groceries are not choreographed.

"You're a little bit vulnerable, but on balance it's just so nice to drive my own car, go to the bookstore if I want to," he says. "People have been very, very kind."

After 16 years in public service, Kaine has also returned to the University of Richmond, where he taught from 1987 to 1993. His week begins with 12 fresh-faced, aspiring leaders every Monday in a class at the Jepson School titled "Leadership Breakthroughs."

"It's really good for him," says Sherrie Harrington, Kaine's former secretary in the governor's office, who now runs his office at UR. "He enjoys starting off the week like this."

This semester, the first day of class began with a discussion of David McCullough's biography of President Harry S. Truman, whom Kaine considers one of the "seven or eight greatest presidents."

Kaine asks the students whether they know what they want to do with their lives. As one might expect of leadership students, the great majority have a plan. Then he directs them to the epigraph to the book, which reads, in part:

"We can never tell what is in store for us."

After more than 25 years in Richmond, Kaine still expresses an almost gee-whiz wonder that he is where he is — a friend and sounding board for the nation's first African-American president, entrusted with selling Obama's leadership to a skeptical nation, at war abroad and battling hard economic times at home.

"I feel like I'm a civil-rights lawyer in a kind of temporary, 17-year hiatus into politics," says Kaine, who views his life's work, along with that of his wife, as facilitating the path toward racial reconciliation in America.

"I don't do politics for politics' sake," he says. "I just want this president to succeed and I'm going to define my mission that way. I think his presidency already has been transformative and is going to continue to be."

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Early in his tenure at the DNC, there were doubters that Kaine's nice-guy, non-combative style was the right approach for the chairman's job.

But Democrats raised a record $116 million for the midterm elections, exceeding GOP fundraising. While Republicans fought minor scandals and personality clashes within their operations, Kaine was credited with keeping peace among the Democrats' numerous constituencies.

So even after the Democrats got whipped in November's midterms, losing their majority in the House to Republicans and reducing their margin in the Senate, Michael Steele is out as GOP chairman, and Kaine who had discussions about leaving his post to serve in the White House, appears to be firmly in place at the DNC through the 2012 re-election campaign.

"What I do know is I am the same person that I've always been, and that's what I'm going to do," says Kaine, who added that he would not want to be party chairman if Democrats didn't control the White House.

For Kaine, that strategy is being two-thirds positive in promoting the president and one-third drawing a contrast with the other side.

"You don't have to be an S.O.B. to be in political life," he says. "You don't have to trash other people to be in political life. The horrible shooting in Arizona demonstrates as a nation how much we all have to recommit to respecting people in public service."

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Trying to hold on to the White House will dominate the DNC for the next two years. On this day in his spacious office just south of the U.S. Capitol, Kaine oversees strategy meetings with party staffers and the White House concerning outreach to the Latino and faith-based communities.

His monthly calendar is bumper-to-bumper with trips crisscrossing the country for meetings to raise money, speak to constituent groups, meet elected officials — and raise more money. Part of almost every weekend is spent working, with most Sundays and Mondays spent in Richmond. Last year alone, he logged more than 250,000 miles.

"2011 is all about relationships," Kaine says, encompassing the party's broader strategy post-midterm.

In 2008, Obama ran on change. In 2012, Kaine said, Obama will be able to run on the changes he has made — to health care, the Iraq war, the auto industry, the economy, the anti-gay military policy of "don't ask, don't tell."

"We said we were going to do something, and we actually did it," he says. "That's not necessarily what people are used to."

And so Kaine, who enjoys the Washington political game but lives a life apart in Richmond, is all in. So is his family, who he said has been completely supportive. Nat, a junior at George Washington University in Washington, just started an internship at the White House.

"It would be very hard to do this job, with the traveling, if I had to think of whether I am screwing things up with my kids, is this bad for my family," he said. "But I haven't had that once from the very start."

The future beyond 2012 is less clear. Kaine misses not having to take his shoes off at airports and laments delays caused when airport security guards mistake his harmonica for a deadly weapon. But another run for public office is unlikely.

"I could wake up after Annella's out of college and say I want to do it, but I know myself pretty well. You get spoiled being an executive — being a legislator is not the best way for me to serve others right now, and I find it hard for me to contemplate a future where I say that is the best way for me to serve."

Truman said Washington is "a very easy city for you to forget where you came from and why you got there in the first place."

Citizen Kaine appears not to have forgotten. Being able to have a weekly breakfast with his buddies, to teach, to attend Sunday Mass at St. Elizabeth — the same modest Catholic church in hardscrabble Highland Park where he and his wife were married more than 25 years ago — matters to him.

"He's been faithful to this church," says Sister Cora Marie Billings.

It's only a few days a week, but after 16 years, for Tim Kaine, Richmond feels like home again.

"It's just great being back in the neighborhood."

jnolan@timesdispatch.com

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