Tim Kaine, Clinton’s VP Pick, Is a Replacements Fan
Hillary Clinton announced her running mate this weekend—Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia. While the electorate should definitely brush up on his political track record before hitting the polls this November, Replacements biographer Bob Mehr points out that if elected, Kaine would be the first Replacements fan to serve as vice president. During a radio interview with Richmond-based DJ Chris Bopst, Kaine listed the Replacements’ Let It Be as one of his favorite albums, Style Weekly reports.
The interview happened in 2006 when Kaine was running for governor. (He served as governor from 2006 to 2010.) Bopst told Pitchfork that he was doing radio at WCLM—a soul-focused AM radio station in Richmond—when Kaine called into the station for an interview. Bopst had just been playing “Hurricane” by Bob Dylan, which led to a conversation about Kaine’s love of Dylan’s song “Buckets of Rain.” Then, after talking about their mutual taste in music, Kaine told Bopst: “Oh, the Replacements are one of my favorite bands” and called Let It Be one of his favorite albums.
“It was very real,” Bopst told Pitchfork about his conversation with Kaine. “It was not calculated at all. He was surprised because he was calling a soul radio station, so when I said Dylan and the Replacements, he was like, ‘Really?’ He didn’t have advance time to plan it out—it just came up. He wasn’t pandering.”
Mehr joked about the news, writing:
Tim Kaine is a Replacements fan-cited Let It Be as a fave LP. A man who knows the words to ‘Gary’s Got a Boner’ could be a heartbeat away…
— Bob Mehr (@BobMehr) July 23, 2016
Read “Why It Took Decades for the Replacements to Get Their Due.”
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