About Portland: For Dwight Holton, The Convention Shows How Politics is Personal

It’s a big moment for the lawyer from Richmond, Virginia. Tim Kaine standing at the podium, addressing thousands in the arena, millions tuning in, waiting for hope, magic.

The enormity of it all is not lost on Dwight Holton. At the same time he sees it as the culmination of a lifetime of smaller moments — courtroom appearances arguing on behalf of the victims of insurance companies, house parties as he introduced himself to the people of Richmond, running for city council for the first time, his marriage to Holton’s sister, family vacations.

“This is a situation where nice guys finish first,” he tells Patch as he walks around the podium earlier in the day. He’s taking a tour with his kids and his wife. “Even the people who disagree with him like him.”

Holton, the former U.S. Attorney for Oregon, knows politics — especially Virginia politics. His father was governor there, he has worked in the White House, on presidential campaigns. He knows that his brother-in-law is different.

“He is really special,” Holton says. “That became clear the first time I saw him at a house party, when he was running for city council and he was introducing himself to people.

“The way he connects, the way he listens and lets people know that he understands.”

Holton says that it was Kaine — already a lawyer — who inspired him to become a lawyer.

“Let me tell you a story,” Holton says. “Tim was representing a group of people that had been discriminated against by an insurance company. They were black and being given less favorable policies than white families.

“The insurance company’s defense was basically, yeah, they’re not the same, but they’re pretty good.”

Holton says that Kaine’s closing argument may be the most powerful one he’s ever heard.

“He read the jury the 3/5 clause from the Constitution,” Holton says. “He read to them from the equal protection and reminded the jury that no longer are black people only considered 3/5 of a person.

“He asked the jury to remember that people are people, and pretty good but not the same is no longer acceptable.”

The jury came back with a $100 million verdict.

“He very much reminds me of Atticus Finch in a lot of ways,” Holton says, referring to the social justice-driven lawyer of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and not the more misanthropic version that later appeared in "Go Set a Watchman."

“From his days in the courtroom to his days in the city council and as mayor to his days in the Senate, he has been driven by a sense of doing the right thing,” Holton says. “He has intense sense of right and wrong.”

Over the past six weeks — since it first became clear that that drive had once again got Kaine on the short list; he had been there eight years ago before Barack Obama ended up settling on Joe Biden as his pick — the intensity has built.

“The vetting is fairly intense,” Holton says “We had been through it eight years ago — they don’t just look into the candidate but the candidate’s family, so we had an idea what to expect.”

Holton says that even last Friday when the announcement finally came, no one was sure what was going to happen until it happened.

“I talked to my sister in the afternoon, and she wasn’t sure,” Holton said. “She was getting on a plane for Rhode Island, and I later gave her a hard time about how hard it must have been to be out of pocket for that long.

“Then I saw the flash from one of the news organizations and forwarded it to her. She wrote back, 'Yes.' ”

On Tuesday night, after Hillary Clinton officially received the nomination, a few hundred Bernie Sanders supporters, led in part by a handful from Oregon, staged a walkout, something that Holton thinks won’t happen again as people get to know Kaine.

Holton says that he understands how hard the Sanders supporters fought and how disappointed they must be.

“Once they know him, they will understand that he shares many of their values,” Holton says. “He is a person who has a very special connection to Oregon, and once they start to see that in him, they will come to appreciate and support him.”

Holton says that his brother-in-law comes out here about once a year.

“He’s hiked on Mount Hood, he has been to the coast, he has had chowder at Mo’s,” says Holton. “He loves the ocean and loves the mountains. He loves it here almost as much as he loves Virginia.

“He shares our progressive values.”

Holton has been involved in presidential campaigns before, has been to conventions before, but this is his first time “inside the bubble,” as he puts it. And from having to clear Secret Service to get to his hotel room, it is a different experience.

What has not changed is how he sees his brother-in-law.

“He has been a member of my family for more than 30 years, and I can’t overstate how special that has been,” he says. “To realize just how special he is, no one needs to look any further than how my children judge him.”

Holton says one of the knocks against Kaine the past few days is that he is boring.

“When my 9-year-old daughter Fiona heard that, she simply couldn’t believe it,” Holton says.

“Uncle Tim?" she said. "He is a goofball.”

Photo of Fiona Holton by Dwight Holton