Video: Sen. Tim Kaine Campaigns for Rip Sullivan in Arlington

Here's some video of a great event with Sen. Tim Kaine for Rip Sullivan's 48th House of Delegates district campaign at Arlington County Board member Mary Hynes' house earlier this afternoon. Sullivan said this election is all about turnout, and how he views this race as "one big voter suppression effort out of Richmond; there's just no question that the Speaker of the House...[was] hoping that a combination of a one-week primary and some...election fatigue in Arlington...as well as the timing, the dead of August...is designed to keep vote turnout low, because that is their strategy for hoping to snatch this election from us in the dead of summer." With that in mind, everyone needs to remind every 48th district Democrat they know to vote on Tuesday. Don't assume anyone else will do that, just do it yourself. "We need everyone to vote on Tuesday."

Kaine talked about meeting Rip when he was running for Lt. Governor in 2001 when Rip was a "young lawyer" (Rip joked that he's STILL a "young lawyer"). Kaine said he has a very short list of people he hopes will be in elective office some day, and he's always had Rip on that list.  Kaine said Rip will be a great representative of the district and advocate for progressive values, which he said (correctly) are majority values in Virginia but not in the gerrymandered House of Delegates. For that reason, Kaine said, the majority of Virginians depend on this small minority in the House of Delegates. Rip will advocate majority values persuasively, which is one reason why it's so important to send him to do that job. 

Kaine then spoke about how Republican voter suppression is "really really serious." Kaine talked about his father-in-law (Linwood Holton) came back from WWII fighting for democracy and was appalled that here in Virginia, there weren't competitive elections and there was a tremendous amount of voter suppression. So "he made his passion trying to promote participation, which for him meant building a two-party system so there would be competition." But now, "how times have changed," as his proud Republican father in law, former Gov. Holton, now only votes for Democrats, in large part because "he knows we care about participation...maximizing involvement and engagement" while the Republican Party "cares about precisely the opposite - minimizing turnout, minimizing participation - whether it's voter suppression or scheduling elections at weird times; that's what they do." Kaine: "Democrats are always trying to maximize participation of people in elections, and Republicans are always trying to minimize the participation of people in elections" across the country. "So that's why you have an election on August 19" instead of November, which should have been obvious. This is the "worst kind of political corruption to do this...I'm serious...doing things intentionally to try to minimize people's participation in the choice of their leaders is the worst kind of political corruption."  Now, we have to beat the other guys' games, show them that they can't get away with this.