Hillary Clinton and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who will serve as her vice presidential running mate on the Democratic ticket. Photo courtesy of NBC News.
On Friday, Hillary Clinton announced Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her vice presidential running mate amid a crowd of cheering fans at a rally in Miami.
Known as a “safe” choice for Clinton who could help drum up support among white working-class voters, Kaine’s past crime-fighting strategies could do the exact opposite for Clinton’s efforts to win over Black voters.
According to Reuters, the 58-year-old senator was a vocal supporter of Project Exile, an initiative launched in 1997 aimed at reducing the illegal purchase of firearms and overall gun violence. The government program made illegal gun possession a federal, not a state, crime, giving prosecutors the green light to send convicted felons, many of whom were Black, to distant federal prisons for at least five years, the news site reports.
Project Exile is now defunct, but critics of the program deemed it a racially insensitive initiative targeting African-American men and condemning them to lengthy sentences behind bars. Many also blamed the project for causing a surge in the U.S. prison population during the 1990s.
Campaign Zero co-founder Sam Sinyangwe said Clinton’s choice for Kaine as her VP may do more harm than good in her efforts to rally support from Black voters, especially the younger ones.
“To select somebody like (Kaine) is not a sign of good leadership potential in a president,” Sinyangwe said.
The former Secretary of State has faced criticism herself for favoring tough-on-crime initiatives backed by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Earlier this year, two Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted a Clinton fundraiser in South Carolina.
“I’m not a super predator Hillary Clinton,” one of the demonstrators said in reference to a shameful speech the former first lady gave in 1996 concerning the crime bill. “Can you apologize to Black people for mass incarceration?”
In the infamous address, Clinton described young Blacks as “super predators” with “no conscience, no empathy.”
“We can talk about why they ended up this way, but first we have to bring them to heel,” she said.
African-American civil rights lawyer and activist Nicole Lee also expressed concern over Clinton’s pick for her vice presidential running mate.
“Project Exile broke Black families,” Lee explained. “This is not a benign thing to be for. These measures were not used against white kids in the suburbs with guns, they were used against Black kids in the cities.”
According to officials who were in Richmond during Kaine’s mayoral tenure, the future senator was forced to take dramatic steps, as the community had been ravaged by the crack epidemic and the city’s murder rate was through the roof.
Jerry Oliver, a Black police chief at the time, said Project Exile focused on African-American communities because it was necessary.
“We had to be where the problems were,” Oliver said.
Top gun lobbying group, the National Rifle Association, surprisingly backed the controversial initiative, along with gun control advocates, Democrats and Republicans, Reuters reports. Now, Kaine is said to support legislation that would soften some mandatory minimum federal sentences and give judges more discretion in said sentencing. However, representatives from his office assert that he’s still a supporter of firm sentences for illegal gun possession.
Vice president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Kevin Ring said Kaine will have to prove that he’s “evolved” on the issue of mandatory minimum sentences to gain the support of Black voters.
“There are some that will be bothered,” Ring said. “There will be questions.”
Kaine’s past support of Project Exile displays a similar “law and order” stance on crime to that of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. According to Reuters, Trump has called for the program’s revival and his campaign website called the effects of the initiative “tremendous.”
