Kaine Devoting 30 Percent of Work Week to DNC
RICHMOND -- Timothy M. Kaine said he has been spending a day and a half of each workweek handling fundraising and policy matters for the Democratic National Committee, a departure from his pledge to conduct most of his national party work by phone and fax and restrict it largely to evenings and weekends while he is governor of Virginia.
In an interview in his office on Capitol Square, Kaine said he typically spends one day a week traveling as his party's national chairman and half a day working at the party's headquarters in Washington.
But Kaine said he remains in constant contact with staff from the governor's office by cellphone and e-mail when he is gone. To help, he said, he began carrying a BlackBerry.
"I'm an around-the-clock governor," he said as he prepared to fly to Minnesota on Friday on party business. "There is no state where the governor is just on cruise control. Doing the hard work and unglamorous work of governor in the toughest economy since the 1930s is enormously time-consuming and extremely difficult."
Read more about Kaine's travels, and see a map detailing out-of-state trips below. Send a note if you know of stops on the governor's itinerary we've missed.
View Kaine's travels in a larger map
By
Christopher Dean Hopkins
|
July 9, 2009; 8:00 AM ET
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Timothy M. Kaine
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Posted by: OldVirginian | July 9, 2009 1:18 PM | Report abuse
While this doesn't sound great to me, some people just need to be busy to be productive. In most states, at this point in their term, the governor would be spending 100% of their time campaigning--so while I have mixed feelings about our term limits for governors, this doesn't sound all that unreasonable to me.
I'm withholding judgment until he does release his schedule, and we find out his hours. Some executives are more or less hands on; If people want to make this an issue, they should talk to his staff.
Posted by: tjrbd_Virginian | July 13, 2009 3:57 PM | Report abuse
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It is very disappointing that our Governor continues to disregard the obvious wishes of the citizens and commit to one job or the other. We did not elect him to be a 70% executive. If this were a business, the Board would have forced him to resign by now. Glad the Post keeps pointing out Kaine's lack of concern for Virginia.