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Hillary Clinton went with a pretty vanilla choice for her running mate: Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
Though he’s relative unknown to most of the country and, by extension, Silicon Valley, Kaine will provide yet another reason to not vote for Donald Trump.
He toes a Clinton-like line about appropriately balancing privacy and security when it comes tech encryption, and he has proposed legislation for “technical” education programs. When he served as the governor of Virginia (and as a senator), he supported expanding broadband internet access.
In a press release, Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Technology Association trade group, praised Kaine as an ally of the tech industry.
“Throughout his political career, Senator Kaine has been a supporter of free trade and other issues critical to the technology sector,” Shapiro said. “As governor of Virginia, he supported the expansion of high-speed internet access.”
Kaine’s open support for free trade policies, the kind of thing that Silicon Valley people really like to hear, is a rarity in this election cycle. Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have loudly criticized the in-progress Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, and Hillary Clinton has done the same — albeit with a fraction of the same conviction.
But for Silicon Valley, Kaine’s biggest asset is a very simple one.
His running mate is not Donald Trump.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
