News Round-up: Kaine...and Warner... Win Big

In a season of negative campaigning, some good has come of this past election.

As we all know, Tim Kaine will be Virginia's next Governor, soundly deafeating Republican Jerry Kilgore yesterday evening. According to The Washington Post's post-election report, the outcome of the Kaine-Kilgore match in part "demonstrated the appeal of Gov. Mark R. Warner (D), for whom this could become the first stop of a presidential campaign."

The Post further attributed the win to Warner's "soaring approval rating that was steady across party lines and an electorate that was happy with the way the state was being governed and upset with the national trends."

The Richmond Times-Dispatch seconded that, describing the Kaine triumph as "a big win for Warner, who captured the Executive Mansion four years ago from Republicans and whose popularity is credited with helping steer Kaine to victory."

ABC News declared that Kaine's triumph "was likely to boost Warner's profile as a possible 2008 presidential candidate," which The USA Today said added "cachet" to Warner's expected bid.

And rounding up the news coverage of the election, The New York Times reports that Warner "is trying to cast himself as a pragmatic, centrist Democrat who can win in the South, and Mr. Kaine's victory clearly burnished that image."

Warner's stature is growing steadily on the national scene, just as he governed Virginia over the past four years with steady stewardship in a historically conservative state. Now it's time for the rest of the U.S. to discover what Virginians already know about Warner.