With media speculation bubbling that he’d be picked as Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonBiden leads Trump by 36 points nationally among Latinos: poll Democratic super PAC to hit Trump in battleground states over coronavirus deaths Battle lines drawn on precedent in Supreme Court fight MORE’s vice president, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine Timothy (Tim) Michael KaineNames to watch as Trump picks Ginsburg replacement on Supreme Court Barrett seen as a front-runner for Trump Supreme Court pick Biden promises Democratic senators help in battleground states MORE interrupted his schedule in mid-June to dine with an elite group of South Asian liberals.

Over curries and rice at a private home on Capitol Hill, Kaine explained to these Asian-American business figures how their community could decide the fates of Democrats in battleground states around the country. That's particularly so in his home state of Virginia, where Asian-American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) make up 5 percent of the electorate, more than President Obama's margin of victory in 2012 over Mitt Romney.

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Kaine didn’t specifically mention the presidential race at the dinner, but a source present, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation, said he was surprised to hear the senator talk for an hour in granular detail about the Asian-American voting bloc and its potentially decisive power in swing states like Virginia.

“It was like a moneyball approach to politics,” the source said, referring to the statistics-heavy baseball strategy.

The source came away from the dinner sure that Kaine would use his knowledge of the fast growing, and reliably blue, South Asian voting bloc to help Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, sew up Virginia, a key election battleground.

That theory appears to be playing out.

Barnstorming the country as Clinton’s running mate, Kaine is proving to be a secret asset with minority voters, particularly in his home state.

While the Virginia Senator earned eye rolls from many liberals when tapped for the ticket — typifying the mockery is a Huffington Post story headlined, "Is White-Male Tim Kaine Too Boring to be Hillary Clinton’s Vice President?" — Kaine’s fluency in Spanish, his depth of knowledge about Virginia and ability to appeal to specific ethnic groups like Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, all underscore his potential value.

Virginia and its diverse population matter greatly in 2016.

While the state backed President Obama in each of the past two elections, it voted Republican in the eight elections prior. This week, a new CBS News/YouGov poll put Clinton ahead by 12 points in the state but it’s expected to tighten.

Republican nominee Donald Trump Donald John TrumpBiden leads Trump by 36 points nationally among Latinos: poll Trump dismisses climate change role in fires, says Newsom needs to manage forest better Jimmy Kimmel hits Trump for rallies while hosting Emmy Awards MORE leads Clinton among the blue-collar white voters that populate the more rural portions of the state, but Democrats have a clear path to victory by mobilizing minority voters in the areas surrounding Washington, D.C.

If Trump can’t turn it around in a state like Virginia — where Clinton and allies have slowed down ad spending in a sign of confidence — it could be a harbinger of wider troubles.

Kaine, who won more than 70 percent of Virginia’s AAPI voters during his 2012 Senate race, brings to the Clinton campaign a political lifetime of strategizing about Asian voters.

“He was literally the only Caucasian who spoke at the AAPI Victory Fund launch,” said Shekar Narasimhan, an investment banker who founded a Democratic-aligned super-PAC designed to register and turn out Asian voters in a number of swing states including Virginia.

“His point was, anything you can to energize this community ... help them naturalize, help them register to vote, and get them out to participate.”

Kaine, who has known Narasimhan for more than 15 years, has deep personal connections to the AAPI community in Virginia.

He placed Asian-Americans in key roles as governor, and two weeks ago he was shattered by the death of his aide, Joe Montano — a Filipino-American who played a key role in Kaine’s Asian outreach in Northern Virginia. Kaine took a day off of the campaign trail to speak at the 47-year-old’s funeral service.

A Clinton campaign aide confirmed Kaine is helping the campaign with its AAPI outreach.

“This campaign understands that turning out the AAPI vote is critical, and that's why we will continue to engage AAPI voters in key states such as Virginia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.”

“Sen. Kaine will continue to travel across the country to amplify Hillary’s record for the AAPI community,” the aide added. “The campaign will continue to conduct outreach in Asian languages, deploy a robust network of AAPI and South Asian surrogates, and continue to active our vast ‘AAPI for Hillary’ volunteer groups, including South Asians for Hillary.”

Bolstering his campaign duties, Kaine has been quietly helping the AAPI super-PAC’s efforts, which are focused on registering new Asian voters and turning them out in November.

Narasimhan organized the June dinner to connect Kaine with influential figures in Washington’s South Asian business community, including Akin Gump partner Anurag Varma, Nelson Mullins partner Vinoda Basnayake, and the former chief technology officer in the Obama Administration, Aneesh Chopra.

The super-PAC’s goal is to increase AAPI voter registration by 8 percentage points over 2012 levels and to boost AAPI voter turnout by 5 percentage points in Virginia, Nevada and North Carolina, Narasimhan said. AAPIs make up 9 percent of Nevada's electorate, according to data from the voter mobilization group APIAVote, so the group could prove pivotal there too.

“We believe that if we do that, in a close race in any of those states, that we can be the margin of difference.”

While the AAPI population makes up just 5 percent of Virginia’s electorate, according to APIAVote, that segment could prove decisive in a close race.

President Obama’s margin of victory in Virginia was just 3 percent in 2012. More than twice as many AAPIs nationally voted for Obama over Romney.

It’s a fast growing population and leans overwhelmingly Democratic.

Targeting Asian-American voters is complicated for the Clinton campaign given it’s a vast and diverse community, and there is no obvious media outlet from which to project — like Univision for Hispanics or BET for African-Americans.