Kaine shares the advice McCain gave him after losing 2016 election

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) honored Sen. John McCain after the Arizona Republican’s death on Saturday, reminiscing about how McCain consoled him after losing the 2016 election.

Kaine was the Democratic vice presidential nominee and Hillary Clinton’s running mate on the November 2016 ticket. He wrote about the advice McCain shared with him for Time.

McCain, the GOP nominee, had lost the presidential race to Barack Obama in 2008.

“The first colleague to seek me out after I returned to the Senate a few days after the November 2016 election was John McCain,” Kaine wrote. “He came up to me and said, ‘Tim, there is only one person in the Senate who knows just how you feel. You and I are the only ones who have been on a national ticket and lost. And my advice to you is just get right back to work.’”

{mosads}

“You’re right, John. After a painful loss, it is good to get back to work. And that’s how I’ll feel when I cross the threshold into your old office on Monday,” he continued.

Kaine wrote about how he moved into McCain’s old Senate office, which he had occupied for more than two decades, when then-Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) joined the Obama administration. 

“When Kerry became Secretary of State, McCain decided to switch offices, and I jumped at the chance to move into the space that McCain inhabited for so long.”

Kaine said he pushed to serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee when he came into office in 2013.

Kaine wrote about how he verbally sparred with McCain, the chairman of the committee, during a hearing on the cost overruns of the Ford-class aircraft carrier program.

“When he didn’t like the tack I was taking on a line of questioning about why costs were high, he interrupted me, and the fight was on,” Kaine wrote. “I hadn’t been warned that it was a hot button with him, and my Irish temper came up as fast as his Scottish penny-pinching. We locked into a back-and-forth, with witnesses, trying to prove our points.”

“After the hearing, I was worried that I had offended him — a first-year Senator battling with a Senate lion. But he clapped me on the back, and it was clear he loved it,” Kaine continued.

Kaine thanked the longtime senator for teaching him and said he was “stunned” that the Senate lost a legend.

He tweeted on Saturday night that he “already” missed him.

“A maverick. A model of strength in Vietnam. A champion of servicemembers, campaign finance reform and many other causes. His voice loomed large, was almost always desperately needed, and will be sorely absent in the times to come. Rest easy,” Kaine tweeted shortly after McCain’s death.

I already miss my friend John McCain. A maverick. A model of strength in Vietnam. A champion of servicemembers, campaign finance reform and many other causes. His voice loomed large, was almost always desperately needed, and will be sorely absent in the times to come. Rest easy.

— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) August 25, 2018

McCain, a Vietnam War veteran, died one day after his family announced that he would be discontinuing medical treatment for brain cancer, stating that the “progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age [had] render[ed] their verdict.”

McCain was diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma in July 2017.

He survived years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam before becoming a leading actor on the political stage for decades.