The race for Senate in Virginia got much more interesting today, as Democratic National Committee chair and former governor Tim Kaine announced that he would pursue the seat being vacated by current Sen. Jim Webb. Kaine, who has chaired the DNC since January 2009, will likely face former Sen. George Allen in what is already being touted as a key bellwether race during the national 2012 election cycle.

After Webb announced that he would not be seeking re-election, several Democrats targeted Kaine as their preferred candidate. It will be interesting to see if Kaine, who has very strong ties with President Barack Obama, will be able to poll as well as he did in heavily Republican areas of the state like he did during his gubernatorial campaign — a video Kaine released today makes no mention of either Obama or the DNC.

During his time in office, Kaine was a strong supporter of above-ground Metro service to Dulles, enacted a ban on smoking in all government buildings and state-owned cars and maintained a reliably strong base in Northern Virginia.