winning 1,025,942 votes (51.7%) to Kilgore's 912,327 (46.0%). A third candidate, independent state Senator H. Russell Potts Jr., ran as an "independent Republican" and received 43,953 votes (2.2%). Kaine emphasized fiscal responsibility and a centrist message. He expressed support for controlling sprawl and tackling longstanding traffic issues, an issue that resonated in the northern Virginia exurbs. He benefited from his association with the popular outgoing Democratic governor, Mark Warner, who had performed well in traditionally Republican areas of the state. On the campaign trail, Kaine referred to the "Warner-Kaine administration" in speeches and received Warner's strong backing. Kilgore later attributed his defeat to Warner's high popularity and President George W. Bush's sharply declining popularity; Bush held a rally with Kilgore on the campaign's final day. The campaign turned sharply negative in its final weeks, with Kilgore running television attack ads that falsely claimed that Kaine believed that "Hitler doesn't qualify for the death penalty." The ads also attacked Kaine for his service ten years earlier as a court-appointed attorney for a death-row inmate. The editorial boards of The Washington Post and a number of Virginia newspapers denounced the ads as a "smear" and "dishonest." Kaine responded with an ad "in which he told voters that he opposes capital punishment but would take an oath and enforce the death penalty. In later polls, voters said they believed Kaine's response and were angered by Kilgore's negative ads." In the election, Kaine won by large margins in the Democratic strongholds such as Richmond and northern Virginia's inner suburbs (such as Alexandria and Arlington), as well as in the Democratic-trending Fairfax County. Kaine also won Republican-leaning areas in Northern Virginia's outer suburbs, including Prince William County and Loudoun County, where George W. Bush had beat John Kerry in the previous year's presidential election, and performed "surprisingly well in Republican strongholds like Virginia Beach and Chesapeake." Kaine also defeated Kilgore in the burgeoning Richmond suburbs. Kilgore led in southwest Virginia and in the Shenandoah Valley. Governor of Virginia (2006–2010) Kaine was sworn in as governor at the colonial Capitol at Williamsburg, on January 14, 2006, the first governor since Thomas Jefferson to be inaugurated there. Kaine was chairman of the Southern Governors' Association from 2008 to 2009. Democratic response to State of the Union address On January 31, 2006, Kaine gave the Democratic response to President George W. Bush's 2006 State of the Union address.