TRANSCRIPT: Tim Kaine accepts VP nomination, running with Hillary Clinton
In the years that followed I became mayor of Richmond. I was elected lieutenant governor of Virginia. And in 2006 I became the 70th governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. When we moved – when we moved into the governor’s mansion after the inauguration, my wife became the only person who had ever lived there first as a child and then as a an adult. We had to make tough decisions when I was in office because it was the deepest recession since the 1930s. But that didn’t stop us from expanding early childhood education, from building more classrooms and facilities on our college campuses so more could go to school, because we knew that education was the key to everything we wanted to achieve as a state and it’s the key to everything we want to achieve as a nation.
We invested in open space preservation and cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay because our kids and grandkids deserve to enjoy the beautiful commonwealth that we love, just like you love the beauty of your Sunshine state. And we achieved national recognition for our work in tough times. When I was governor of Virginia, best-managed state in America, best state for a child to have a successful life, best state for business, one of the lowest employment rates, one of the highest bond ratings, one of the highest family incomes. We did that during tough times.
And so today I am proud to carry that work forward as a Virginia senator serving on the Armed Services, Foreign Relations, and Budget Committees. They actually just added me to the Aging Committee, too. I don’t know why they would have done that, would have done that. I’m proud to support my wife’s public service. She has been a legal aid lawyer, juvenile court judge, foster care reformer; now she’s Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Virginia.
And Anne and I are both so proud of our great commonwealth and of our great nation. And isn’t it great already? I mean, isn’t it great already? What a great country. As I look back over these experiences, what I’ve learned is that God has created a rich and beautiful tapestry in this country. It is a rainbow of cultural diversity that embraces all people – regardless of their race or economic status, regardless of their religion or their gender, regardless of their sexual orientation or where they’re from. We’ve got this beautiful country that should be a country of welcome, that should be a country of inclusion, and I know that that is a fundamental value that Hillary Clinton shares.