The Democratic candidate for vice president is reaching out to students and other voters in Iowa.
Iowa State University student Eric Spies introduced Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who said he was making his first stop in Iowa since Hillary Clinton chose him as her running mate. Kaine's wife, Anne Holton, also spoke to the crowd of a couple hundred people, many of them students, at the Memorial Union on the Iowa State campus in Ames.
Kaine outlined his party's plan for making a college education more affordable. He criticized laws that he says make it easier to refinance a vacation home or a yacht than to refinance student debt.
"What does that say about our priorities?" he asked. "So we're going to create opportunities for people to refinance their loans so they can make them more affordable. And that could help as many as 310,000 borrowers right here in Iowa."
Kaine says the plan will also waive tuition for students from poor families and make in-state college debt-free for slightly better-off students.
In addition to differences on higher education, Kaine listed several other areas where the Democratic platform differs greatly from the Republican one: LGBT equality, climate science, immigration and voting access.
"You already know what you think, and Hillary Clinton and I are with you and the other guys are against us and want to take us backward," Kaine said. "When I worked in Honduras as a missionary we had a phrase, 'Adelante no atrás.' We're going forward, we're not gonna go backward. We're not going back."
Kaine encouraged young voters to make personal connections with their friends, neighbors and communities in the remaining days before the election. He noted Iowa's reputation as a place for person-to-person politics.
