Tim Kaine delivers speech entirely in Spanish

PHOENIX, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine delivered a 30-minute stump speech entirely in Spanish to a heavily Hispanic audience in Arizona, a first for any major party candidate.

The New York Times reports Kaine's Spanish, which he learned while working with Jesuit missionaries for a year in Honduras as a young man, was not perfect, but easily understandable. Despite a few flubs and slight mispronunciations, Kaine's language was clean and he was able to offer a handful of off-the-cuff statements that deviated from his prepared text.

Kaine delivered a handful of lines in Spanish during his speech at the Democratic National Convention and has done multiple Spanish-language media interviews since Hillary Clinton named him to the ticket in July.

It is no coincidence Kaine's speech happened in Phoenix, either. Arizona is a state that has not historically been in play for Democrats. It has voted Democrat only once since 1952 -- for Bill Clinton in 1996.

But the Latino population in the state is exploding and the mixture of Donald Trump's heated rhetoric about illegal immigrants combined with their increasing share of the vote has made the race there much closer than other recent presidential election.

In his speech, Kaine noted Arizona is on track to become a minority majority state -- one where racial minorities combine to outnumber whites -- by 2030, a generation before the rest of the country, if population data continues on its present trajectory.

"By 2050, communities of color will constitute the majority of our population. So of course Latinos will help shape the future of America because you folks are the future of the United States," he said.