WASHINGTON — Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Tim Kaine announced Tuesday that he will run for the Virginia Senate seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Jim Webb in 2012.
“I’m running!” Kaine tweeted, providing a link to a video announcing his candidacy.
“I’m running for the United States Senate because America has big challenges, and I’m convinced that Virginia has answers to help strengthen our nation,” Kaine says in the video, describing the state as having “balance and civility … that is sadly disappearing from Washington.”
Kaine, who was a popular governor in Virginia before he became DNC chairman, made the announcement exactly one week after President Barack Obama urged him to throw his hat into the ring.
“There has been some speculation about our DNC chair plunging back into the hurly-burly of electoral politics,” Obama said at a DNC fundraiser in Manhattan last Tuesday. “I don’t know if these rumors are true, but what I do know is that I cannot imagine somebody who has been a better partner to me and a better friend to me than our DNC chair, Tim Kaine.”
“Since he happened to be a really great governor for the Commonwealth of Virginia, I suspect that, should he choose to do so, he would also be an outstanding senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Obama said.
Former Republican governor and senator George Allen has already announced his candidacy for the seat, which he lost to Webb in 2006.