If it doesn’t already, Silicon Valley will probably learn to really like Tim Kaine

Hillary Clinton went with a pretty vanilla choice for her running mate: Sen Tim Kaine (D-VA). Though he’s relative unknown to most of the country and, by extension, Silicon Valley, Sen 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. Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Technology Association trade group, praised Kaine as an ally of the tech industry. Sen 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 Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT) 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, Sen Kaine’s biggest asset is a very simple one: His running mate is not Donald Trump.