Clinton’s VP, Tim Kaine, Has One Of The Most Pro-Innovation Records In Congress

I first met Senator Tim Kaine, after one of Silicon Valley’s most active political campaigners suggested a few private meetings with relatively unknown members of Congress who he considered to have extraordinary records on innovation. Kaine stood out from other members in Congress in his unusual interest in tech policy for brand new emerging industries, especially massively open online education (which was the hot new thing in tech back in 2013).

Hillary Clinton had a number of policymakers on her short list of Vice Presidential candidates with star power, but Tim Kaine is an obscure member of Congress and leaves many in the country seeking answers about what his record signals about her potential presidential agenda.

A look at Kaine’s record and his supporters shows that he has strong support from Silicon Valley insiders, along with an unusually strong emphasis on high-skilled education. I’ll detail Kaine’s political backers and his record on traditional tech policy below, what’s most striking is the sheer number of bills he authored related to technical education and modernizing public institutions.

If we just look at the bills related to creating new funded programs or regulations (i.e. excluding minor bills about recognizing figures or authorization logistics), 10 of the 19 major bills introduced are about education, especially technical education for middle school students, veterans, and foster youth.

For instance, his Family Unification, Preservation, and Modernization Act sought to extend the amount of time that disadvantaged youth could receive housing assistance while pursuing career training and funded welfare institutions to improve their backend systems for coordinating the outreach.

This is a pretty technocratic approach to child welfare, and it’s indicative of the kinds of Democrats that Silicon Valley supports: those who apply the tech principles of transparency, efficiency, and training to solving social ills.

The only restriction on the free market he appears to have authored, according to the database Govtrack, is a universal background checks provision on firearms in 2015.

This kind of lawmaking has made him friends among the well-heeled donors in Silicon Valley, including Google’s Eric Schmidt and Former Facebook President Sean Parker, who gave large donations in 2015. He also got a large donation from Ali Partovi of the education organization, Code.org, for his support of computer science education.

For those curious whether Kaine and (potentially Clinton) will support the kinds of anti-business policies that are stereotypical of Democrats, I historically have looked at whether a politician has a less than perfect record with labor unions. Silicon Valley-supported Democrats tend to favor issues like Free Trade, high-skilled immigration, charter schools, issues that irk labor-union-friendly liberals who prefer more protectionist policies for American workers and teachers.

Though Kaine has a +90% score from the AFL-CIO union group, he has helped author laws promoting more high-skilled immigration from Asia and supports President Obama’s free trade agreements (unlike some of Clinton’s other Vice-Presidential potentials, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren).

So, at least from his record, Clinton picking Kaine signals are more innovation friendly administration that may have been expected if she had chosen someone else.

*The Ferenstein Wire is a syndicated news column; readers can sign up for the newsletter for more stories.