Sen. Tim Kaine (D.) told a reporter he wasn’t giving his full attention to shutdown negotiations before Sunday because he was so focused on the elections in his home state of Virginia.
“I didn’t fully understand how dug in [Republicans] were, again because I was so focused on the Virginia elections,” Kaine told a reporter Sunday. “I wasn’t in this discussion on the health care to see how dug in they were.”
REPORTER: “Do you wish that you would have started looking for this off-ramp sooner?”
SENATOR KAINE: “I was so focused on the Virginia elections I wasn’t in this discussion on the healthcare to see how dug in they were.” pic.twitter.com/lSTUUmxNPq
— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 10, 2025
Kaine did not run in this year’s elections, and his Senate seat is not up for reelection until 2030.
The Virginia senator voted multiple times against a government funding bill before flipping Sunday, joining seven other members of the Democratic caucus who supported a Republican-led funding bill. The other members are Democratic senators John Fetterman (Pa.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), and Maggie Hassan (N.H.), as well as independent senator Angus King (Maine), who caucuses with Democrats.
Durbin, who is retiring at the end of his term, reportedly wanted to “break with the Democrats and reopen the government” as of two weeks ago, according to Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.). At the time, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) squashed reopening plans, Mullin said. While Schumer voted against the Sunday deal, some congressional Democrats blamed him for the eight senators’ insurgency, with Reps. Ro Khanna (Calif.) and Seth Moulton (Mass.) saying the Senate minority leader is no longer “effective.”
While Kaine said Sunday he couldn’t pay attention to the health care discussions, referring to plans to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, he talked to CNN about those subsidies just last week. “We’ve got to have a path to fixing the ACA,” he said on November 4, though he added that “all the I’s and T’s don’t have to be dotted and crossed” for him to vote for a bill.
Kaine said in a statement he voted for the deal because it “guarantees a vote to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits” and “will protect federal workers from baseless firings.”
Because of the insurgent senators’ Sunday vote, the bill, which would fund the government until January, can now pass the Senate by a simple majority vote. If it passes, it will return to the House of Representatives before President Donald Trump can sign it.
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