Kaine courts Asian voters for Clinton

With media speculation bubbling that he’d be picked as Hillary Clinton’s VP, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine 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.

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 Hillary Clinton sew up Virginia, a key election battleground. That theory appears to be playing out.

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http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/291203-kaine-courts-asian-voters-for-clinton