Clinton and Kaine team up at first rally as running mates.
Clinton uses rally to introduce Kaine, contrast with Trump
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton joined hands Saturday with Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, introducing her new running mate to a national audience and promising that the pair offered “a very different vision” from that of the Republican Party.
“Tim Kaine is everything Donald Trump and Mike Pence are not,” Clinton said at Miami’s Florida International University. “He is qualified to step into this job and lead on Day One. And he is a progressive who gets things done.”
Clinton lauded Kaine’s “backbone of steel” and for having been “a leader who cares more about making a difference than making headlines.”
Their hourlong rally, before a raucous crowd of more than 5,000, presented a study in contrast between the Democratic ticket and the Republican one. Trump, the Republican nominee, first appeared with his running mate, Indiana Gov. Pence, at a Manhattan hotel ballroom a week ago, where a hand-picked audience of about 250 had a muted response. The pair barely shared time onstage. Clinton and Kaine, who also served as governor of Virginia and mayor of Richmond, spent several minutes walking the stage together and waving, and each sat on a stool, attentive, as the other spoke.
Their message, too, was aimed at putting the the two tickets’ messages in stark relief. “America is not built on fear,” Kaine said during a speech that included occasional asides in Spanish, which animated the heavily Latino crowd. “America was built on courage and imagination.”
Discussing immigration laws and Trump’s comments on Latinos, Kaine asked naturalized citizens in the room to raise their hands. Hundreds did. “Thanks for choosing us,” he told them. “Bienvenidos a todos a nuestro país, porque somos americanos todos,” Kaine told the crowd at another point: welcome all to our country, because we’re all American.
Much of the joint appearance was focused on starting to introduce Kaine, 58, to voters.
Clinton extolled the Midwestern values she shares with the senator, who was born in Minnesota and grew up in Kansas City, noting that both had fathers who ran small businesses and taught them about “the dignity of work.” A “lifelong commitment to social justice” was a “shining example of faith in action,” Clinton, a Methodist, said of Kaine, a Roman Catholic, who spoke similarly, saying their “creed is the same: do all the good you can.”
Taking the microphone after sharing a peck on the cheek and pat on the back with Clinton, Kaine said he was “feeling a lot of things today, but mostly gratitude.”
“For many of you, this is the first time you’ve heard my name,” Kaine said in a speech that was heavy on biography of himself and of his wife, Anne Holton, Virginia’s secretary of education. “I’m excited for us to get to know one another.”
Kaine reflected on his life’s arc, including his decision to take a year away from Harvard Law School to work at a technical school in Honduras with Jesuit missionaries. “My time in Honduras changed my life in so many ways,” he said.