Mark Warner: Senate Run a Prelude to Executive Branch
Mark Warner admitted to butterflies before giving his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention this week. His message of shared economic prosperity and creating true bi-partisanship in Washington resonated with centrist Democrats.
Former Virginia Governor Warner bowed-out of a nascent presidential bid before Iowa and left under the pat Washington answer: "to spend more time with my family." Except this time, after consulting with his wife Lisa, it was for real. Gov. Warner told me yesterday that he is taking his first daughter off to college right after the DNC convention. Another daughter is in high school and a third is in her teenage years. Gov. Warner has time. Plenty of time (think 6 to 8 years of time in electoral cycles).
I was communications director of the Draft Mark Warner for President PAC. We built a web-based outreach and fundraising campaign to over 100,000 unique Web visitors and a million hits on the site. So, when we all marched to Gov. Warner's Old Town Alexandria townhouse to hear the news that he would turn his attention to matters in Virginia, many of us felt we had lost our last, best hope for the White House. We also felt that some "deal" may have been engineered with Senator Obama or the DNC.
But Warner quickly regrouped to bid for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. John Warner. This seat has been in Republican hands for a generation. Gov. Mark Warner is now a clear frontrunner, well-financed, and connecting with Virginians from the southside to northern Va. He also picked-up strong financial support this week in Denver at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee meeting yesterday.
Gov. Warner's business background, knowledge of telecommunications and technology sectors, national attention in helping Sen. Obama win the Virginia primary (and raising his successor Tim Kaine as a VP prospect), made him a great choice for keynoter.
Keynoter's Blessing?
We asked Gov. Warner about his keynote. His talk about the Future of America and how many people in the middle class are being left behind was perhaps a prelude to a national message he can own. Warner said: "there is no nation we can't out-hustle and out-compete. And no American be left out or left behind." His focus on Americans and "a fair shot" instead of a long-shot, presages his Horatio Alger platform of rising from humble roots to become a billionaire.
Barack Obama was the last keynoter of the Democratic National Convention. Senator Obama used the platform as a launching pad just a few years later. Mark Warner pointed out that a keynote can be a blessing but that halo may need to be polished by more national experience in the Senate.
Mark Warner would not say what ambitions will lie ahead. (see video blog from Reuters.com). Too few Americans really knew Mark Warner's story before this week. He did commit to winning the Senate seat in Virginia, serving six years and waiting, biding his time.
See my video interview with Warner here at Reuters.