Kaine: Liberty solved club controversy ‘perfectly’

Read more coverage of the Liberty University Democrats club controversy

Liberty University solved its recent controversy over allowing a College Democrats club to exist on campus “perfectly,” Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said Thursday during his eighth year of speaking to Boys State gatherings in Lynchburg.

With six months remaining in his term, Kaine also told the high school students he’s proud of Virginia’s six recognitions as a good state for doing business, and of protecting nearly 400,000 acres from development.

Noting that he has cut the state budget seven times, Kaine said, “What I will probably be known for is that I was the governor who had to steer the ship of state through the hardest of times” because of revenue shortfalls, Kaine said.

“I think we have done that with honor and integrity, but it has not been easy,” he said.

His biggest frustration, he said, has been an inability to persuade the General Assembly to provide more funding for roads in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

Kaine said little about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s confession Wednesday to having an extramarital affair.

“My overwhelming sense is just one of sadness” for the whole Sanford family, Kaine said, adding that he met Sanford during National Governors Association meetings.

Kaine also said “I don’t know” whether Sanford’s travels to Argentina during the affair would affect the attention Virginia Republicans have been giving to Kaine’s out-of-state travel as chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

The DNC said earlier this week it would start paying the travel costs of Kaine’s security detail when he makes DNC-related trips. The state Republican Party also urged people to call Kaine’s office with questions about his whereabouts.

As of Thursday, there had been “very few” calls asking about those travels, Kaine said.

“I think it’s kind of a partisan thing that they are raising it. We get virtually no public interest” in his DNC activities, Kaine said.

The governor also complimented Liberty University for its decision, announced Tuesday, to allow student clubs representing the Democratic and Republican parties to exist on an unofficial status.

LU revoked its recognition of a campus Democratic club in May, mostly because of a pro-choice plank on abortion in the party’s national platform.

After a month of controversy, the university said Tuesday that both Democratic and Republican clubs could exist on campus as informal groups. LU had officially recognized the Republican club until Tuesday.

Kaine, in his role as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, had asked the school a month ago “to reverse this attack on the liberty of its students.”

In an interview after he spoke to the American Legion-sponsored Boys State attendees, Kaine said Thursday that, “I could tell even from the first couple of days” of the month-long controversy “that they were working on it, they were trying to figure it out.”

“I think the resolution they have announced makes a lot of sense. Instead of giving either party the official imprimatur, they are just saying, ‘OK, neither party is official but both parties are welcome,’” Kaine said.

LU Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said earlier this week that he felt Democratic Party officials had guided the Campus Democrats club during the controversy, because a regional official of the Young Democrats group listened in on a call between LU officials and club members.

“I never had a direct conversation with anybody here about the late unpleasantness,” over the Campus Democrats Club, Kaine said. He added that he was confident that no one in the DNC had taken a role, either, or “they would have told me about it.”

After telling the high-schoolers that he got into politics because he felt a drive to serve others, Kaine said, “You are going to get some things done in life that you never dreamed, and some things you hoped to do you will not get done.”

His biggest disappointment, Kaine said, has been that “I wanted more money for roads, especially in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. But I was never able to convince the legislature to put more money into roads,” although legislation approved in 2007 provided some transportation funds, particularly for rail and public transit.

When Kaine opened his appearance to questions from the students, one of them asked how a clean-air policy he announced Tuesday was consistent with his support for Dominion Power’s plans to build a coal-fired generating plant.

Kaine said he decided to support the Dominion plan for a new plant in Wise County because it would have cleaner technology than older coal-fired plants, and also because Dominion said, “if you let us build this plant, we will take an old one and switch it from coal to gas, which is cleaner,” Kaine said.

The plant to be converted is at Bremo on the James River in Fluvanna County, and went into service in the 1950s. That means the 1970 standards in the federal clean-air act don’t apply to the Bremo plant, Kaine said.

“I thought that combination of building a new and cleaner plant and changing the dirty one to a gas plant made sense,” Kaine said.