Strange trinkets fill Kaine’s gift list

Richmond (Map, News) - Franklin County sent a boat paddle. An Ashland man offered “13 gently worn silk ties.” The president of Afghanistan gave a 3-foot-by-5-foot prayer rug, and the Roanoke County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court tendered a package of “judge’s fudges.”

No gift is too small or strange for Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, judging from the most recent financial disclosure forms that list, in detail, the hundreds of gifts he received in 2006. The documents show the governor accepted piles of trinkets, hats, shirts, food, wine, plates, gift baskets, bags, books and other knicknacks, most of them worth less than $50.

“The governor appreciates and enjoys each and every gift,” Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall said.

But to call them all cherished would be an overstatement. Many are entombed in a basement gift room in the executive office building in Richmond. Some, Hall said, end up in the break room marked with a sign reading “free to good home.” Yet others end up in Hall’s office.

“As you imagine, there is just so much you can do with this stuff,” Hall said, surveying a snow globe from New Orleans, a hand-carved state seal-bearing banjo and a bowl of military coins in front of him.

There is little uniting the donors, ideologically or otherwise. Jerry Falwell, who died earlier this month, presented Kaine with a gift basket containing books, Liberty University legal pads, a key chain, chocolates, a paperweight and other items. The Honduran ambassador gave him cigars. The Turner Ham House’s offering included two small hams. And T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria provided Kaine with a figure of a Mayan temple.

wflook@dcexaminer.com

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