Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine will campaign together on Saturday across Pennsylvania, but with Donald Trump fading fast and barely two weeks left until the election, the Democrats and their aides are increasingly turning their attention from forging of a political partnership to a governing one.

It has been six weeks since the Democratic ticket last stumped side-by-side and since then the likelihood that they will occupy the White House next January has only grown, and those around them have quietly begun contemplating Kaine’s portfolio and role in 2017.


“You’re up in the polls you’re starting to feel like, ‘We might be working together for four years.’ And you don’t want to think it. But it’s in the back of the mind,” said Mark Begich, who served with Kaine in the Senate for two years and has since stayed in touch. “He has to figure out where he can complement her and add value to what’s she’s working on.”

Saturday will mark only the third time that Clinton and Kaine have campaigned together since the Democratic convention, and they don’t have a years-long friendship predating 2016 to lean on. In 2008, he was one of the earliest prominent endorsers of then-Sen. Barack Obama. He led the Democratic Party while she was secretary of state and avoiding partisan fights. And he didn’t join the Senate until 2013, just as she was departing her post.

So, from the start, Clinton’s headquarters worked to integrate Kaine and his team into their existing infrastructure rather than running parallel campaigns. Kaine’s top aide, Mike Henry, still travels with the senator, but he is joined by Matt Paul, a top Clinton confidant who served as her Iowa state director, and Karen Finney, who had previously worked on Clinton’s communications team out of New York. Kaine’s other top adviser to join the campaign, Amy Dudley, a former staffer for Joe Biden, is based out of Brooklyn, giving Kaine a line inside headquarters.

Kaine has already endeared himself to Brooklyn for his willingness to be a team player. As a former lieutenant governor in Virginia, Kaine has the uncommon experience of having already serving as the No. 2 in an executive branch (though the governor and lieutenant governor are elected independently in Virginia.)

“She’s the boss,” as Kaine told People magazine in joint interview with Clinton this summer.

At the vice-presidential debate, Kaine won praise from Clinton’s team for his relentless push to keep the focus on Trump, even to the point where his constant, badgering interruptions got him mocked on Saturday Night Live.

“I needed to make sure that he did not open up any new line of attack on Hillary,” Kaine said on The View last week about his debate. “I’m defending my running mate. And the nice thing was the next day there was no stories about Hillary or anything about Hillary.”

But there have been scant outward signs of any genuine closeness between Clinton and Kaine. After she came down with pneumonia, Kaine said he hadn’t heard of the diagnosis before she fell faint on camera and that he hadn’t spoken to her in the week since their joint appearance on Labor Day.

On the day of Kaine’s only debate, Clinton said she hadn’t spoken to him — “I don’t want to interrupt his rhythm by calling” — and even afterward she at first only emailed, not calling until the next day.

Kaine himself has said he has consulted with Biden about the role of vice president, and that he envisions himself as a counselor for Clinton at the most crucial moments.

“The best job you do as VP is just try to be with the president when every hard decision is made,” Kaine said on The View.

More specifically, he cited his interest, as a former mayor, in working with local governments and using his Spanish-speaking skills to act as a link with the Latino community.

It’s the latter that has some on Clinton’s team particularly excited. Kaine recently made history by delivering an entire campaign speech in Spanish.

“I have a real passion for Latin America,” Kaine said on The View, as campaign insiders have speculated that Kaine could take the lead on South and Central American matters in a potential Clinton administration. In the Senate, Kaine has served on both the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees and as a young man he served as a missionary in Honduras.

As Clinton crafts her legislative agenda, she is also expected to lean on Kaine’s relationships across in the Senate, both from his committee work as well as from co-chairing a weekly bipartisan Senate prayer breakfast.

Prior to his selection, Clinton and Kaine sat for two lengthy meetings, the second of which was a lunch in Chappaqua with their families, including Kaine’s wife, Anne Holton, who was serving as Virginia’s secretary of education until Kaine joined the ticket.

Multiple campaign sources said that Clinton, herself a political spouse, was particularly interested in Holton, the daughter of a former Republican governor of Virginia and a public servant herself. (Bill Clinton was more focused on Kaine. “I felt like a prospective son-in-law getting interviewed,” Kaine told People). Hillary Clinton and Holton bonded over their shared interest in education policy.

“Anne’s story is similar to Hillary,” one campaign official said. “Think about it: she’s ten years younger, she kept her last name, it’s never been a big deal. She is also a lawyer, she’s been a judge, she’s had her own career.”

Amanda Renteria, Clinton’s political director, described it this way: “We have four principals, not two,” she said. “That’s great.”

