Mark Warner

Tim Kaine (2002-2006)

Order:	69^th Governor of Virginia
Term of Office:	January 2002 - January 2006
Predecessor:	Jim Gilmore
Successor:	Tim Kaine
Date of Birth:	December 15, 1954
Place of Birth:	Indianapolis, Indiana
Spouse:	Lisa Collis
Profession:	Businessman
Political Party:	Democratic
Lieutenant Governor:

Mark Robert Warner (born December 15, 1954) is an American politician from the U.S. state of Virginia and a member of the Democratic Party. He is the immediate former Governor of Virginia; in the final months of his gubernatorial term, Warner's poll ratings indicated that he was the most popular Virginia governor in a generation, with record approval ratings of 75% ^*. Warner is now the Honorary Chairman of the Forward Together PAC.

Warner is considered one of the top contenders for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2008 because of his wide appeal to independents and moderate Republicans, and his high popularity in a relatively Republican state. He is considered by many to be a New Democrat, while some believe he is a Blue Dog Democrat. Some have compared Warner to Bill Clinton, another moderate Southern Democratic governor who had strong appeal to moderates and independents. In November 2005, Time magazine named Warner one of the five best governors in the United States.

Early life and career

Warner was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is the son of Robert and Marge Warner, and the older brother of Lisa Warner. He grew up in Illinois, and later in Vernon, Connecticut where he graduated from Rockville High School. He attended The George Washington University and in 1977 became the first person in his family to graduate from college. Warner went on to graduate from Harvard Law School in 1980.

In the early 1980s, Warner served as a Senate staff member to Senator Christopher Dodd. He used his knowledge of federal telecommunications policies as a broker of cellular phone franchise licenses, making a large fortune. As managing director of Columbia Capital Corporation he helped found or was an early investor in a number of technology companies. He co-founded Nextel, as well as Capital Cellular Corporation, and built up an estimated fortune of over $200 million. He married Lisa Collis in 1989, and has three daughters, Madison, Gillian, and Eliza. During her husband's tenure as Governor, Ms. Collis was the first Virginia First Lady to use her maiden name.

Warner involved himself in public efforts related to health care, telecommunications, information technology, and education. He managed Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder's successful 1989 gubernatorial campaign, served as state chairman of the state Democratic Party and ultimately made his own bid for public office, unsuccessfully running for the United States Senate in 1996 against Republican Senator John Warner (no relation) in a "Warner vs. Warner" election. John Warner was unpopular in rural Virginia for opposing the 1994 Senate candidacy of controversial Republican Oliver North, and Mark Warner seized on this to perform impressively in the state's rural areas.

Governor of Virginia

In 2001, Warner campaigned for Governor as a moderate Democrat after years of slowly building up a power base in rural Virginia. He defeated the Republican candidate, then-State Attorney General Mark Earley, by a margin of almost 100,000 votes. In the same election, Republican Jerry Kilgore was elected Attorney General, and Democrat Tim Kaine was elected Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. Although Virginians rejected regional referenda led by Warner to raise the sales tax in 2002 for transportation, Warner worked with moderate Republican legislators and the business community to reform the tax code in 2004, lowering food and income taxes, and increasing the sales and cigarette taxes in 2004, despite his campaign pledge that he would not raise taxes. The action saved the state's AAA bond rating, held at the time by only 5 other states, and allowed the single largest investment in K-12 education in Virginia history. Warner chaired the National Governors Association in 2004-2005 and led a national high school reform movement. He also chaired the Southern Governors' Association. In addition, he was also a member of the Democratic Governors Association.

Warner's popularity paid off for the Democrats when, in 2003 and again in 2005, the party made a net gain in the Virginia House of Delegates for the first time in generations (although the House remained under Republican control). He has encountered some criticism for being too low-key and not leading on hot button issues, but maintains he is trying to avoid unproductive posturing and partisanship.

In January 2005, after a two-year study, the Government Performance Project, in conjunction with Governing magazine and the Pew Charitable Trust, ranked the states in four management categories: money, people, infrastructure, and information. Virginia and Utah tied with an A- overall, but Virginia got A's across the board, prompting Warner to dub Virginia "the best managed state in the nation."

Kaine and Kilgore both sought to succeed Warner as Governor of Virginia. (The Virginia Constitution forbids any Governor from serving consecutive terms, so Warner could not have run for a second term in 2005.) On November 8, 2005, Kaine, the former Mayor of Richmond, won with 52% of the vote. Kilgore, who had resigned as Attorney General in February 2005 to campaign full-time, and who had previously served as Virginia Secretary of Public Safety, received 46% of the vote. Russ Potts, a Republican state senator, also ran for Governor as an independent, receiving 2% of the vote. Warner had supported and campaigned for Kaine, and many national pundits considered Kaine's victory to be further evidence of Warner's political clout in Virginia, as well as a signal of his viability as a presidential candidate.

On November 29, 2005, as was his prerogative as governor, Warner commuted the death sentence of Robin Lovitt to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Lovitt was convicted of murdering Clayton Dicks at an Arlington pool hall in 1999. After his trial in 2001, a court clerk illegally destroyed evidence that was used against Lovitt during his trial, but that could theoretically have exonerated him upon further DNA testing. Lovitt's death sentence would have been the 1,000th carried out in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment as permissible under the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution in 1976. In a statement, Warner said, "The actions of an agent of the commonwealth, in a manner contrary to the express direction of the law, comes at the expense of a defendant facing society's most severe and final sanction." Warner denied clemency in 11 other death penalty cases that came before him as governor.

Warner also arranged for DNA tests of evidence left from the case of Roger Keith Coleman, who was put to death by the state in 1992. Coleman was convicted in the 1981 rape and stabbing death of Coleman's own 19-year-old sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy. Coleman drew national attention, even making the cover of TIME, by repeatedly claiming innocence and protesting the unfairness of the death penalty. However, DNA results announced on January 12, 2006, seemed to confirm Coleman's guilt.^*

Future political career

Warner's home-state popularity is high, polling in the final year of his term with an 80% approval rating from Washington Post, and 76% from Mason-Dixon Political Media Research, published in newspapers statewide. According to Mason-Dixon pollster Brad Coker, that gives Warner the highest approval rating for an outgoing governor in the firm's two-decade history.

Warner is considered to be a potential Presidential candidate in 2008, as Virginia's laws limited him to a single consecutive term in office. After John Kerry's 2004 presidential election defeat, Warner has been regarded by some Democrats as a Clinton-like figure around whom the party could rally in the 2008 election. His business experience, Southern base, fundraising connections within high-tech and venture capital circles, and record of working with black leaders add up to what some see as an attractive political résumé.

Having served only one term as an elected official, however, some believe that Warner may be considered too inexperienced to move to the Presidency; the same point was raised about John Edwards' one Senate term. But others maintain that his challenge would be no different than that of then Governor Clinton in 1992 who nevertheless was successful in capturing the White House.

If he did run for president in 2008, his first test might be a comparison with several other Democratic centrists, including Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, and outgoing Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa, who are all expected to seek to represent the moderate and presumed electable wing of the Democratic party in the Presidential primaries. Other potential candidates include Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, fomer NATO Commander General Wesley Clark, former Vice-President Al Gore and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Many Democratic candidates and office holders in marginal and Republican leaning states across the country, but especially in the South, are fearful of a repeat of the 2000 and 2004 election results which brought heavy losses for Democrats running for state wide offices in Oklahoma, Georgia, Lousiana and parts of Florida. Governor Warner himself has made frequent references to these sentiments with a not so thinly veiled warning to the Democratic party and its primary voters about nominating candidates for national office "that are only expected to win 16 blue states and then hope to win Ohio or Florida". The electoral results of the last 2 US Presidential elections, with the exception of votes from New Mexico, Iowa and New Hampshire, were exact replications of one another as the Democratic nomniee was unable to break into a perceived Republican lock of red states throughout middle America. This was considered to be a troubling situation in light of Bill Clinton's winning performance in states like Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, West Virginia, Tennessee and Ohio in 1992 and 1996. Some political analysts maintain that the Democratic nominee will never win the White House unless he or she significantly expands Democratic winning margins into present day Republican territory. Population projections have also shown that in the coming decade, so called Republican red states like Arizona, Texas, Georgia and North Carolina will gain more electoral votes at the expense of Demcoratic blue states like New York, Massachusetts, Illinois and also at the expense of marginal states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, such that the current 16 blue states plus a Democratic victory in Ohio would not be sufficient to claim the White House after 2010. Some believe Governor Warner's message is intended to highlight the perceived weakness in some of his potential 2008 liberal primary competitors, especially the well financed presumed frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, who many fear could easily win the Democratic Presidential primary but fail to win the general election.

Recent News and Developments

Immediately following the election of 2004, the national campaign Draft Mark Warner for President (which filed with the Federal Election Commission on March 9, 2006 to become a political action committee) was created by Eddie Ratliff of Virginia. This organization has since been spreading information about Governor Warner and gathering signatures for a petition urging him to run for the office.

DemStore, a website that manufactures official and unofficial campaign paraphernalia for Democratic office-seekers (including the 2004 presidential campaigns of Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, and Wesley Clark), has already begun manufacturing "Warner for President" buttons and bumper stickers. It is not clear, however, if their services have been retained by Warner, by his emissaries, or by some sort of "Draft Warner" movement similar to that which surrounded Clark.

On August 29, 2005, Warner announced that he would not challenge George Allen for his Senate seat in 2006, even though a poll commissioned by the Roanoke Times and other papers across Virginia had recently shown that voters would prefer Warner in a head-to-head matchup with Allen. ^* If not elected President, Virginia law would not bar Warner from running for Governor again in 2009 – the law only prevents consecutive terms. Warner would have been likely to pursue Virginia's second Senate seat in 2008 if John Warner had decided to retire (the elder Warner has indicated he will stay on.)

According to the Washington Post, "one of the Democratic Party's most experienced Internet specialists formally signed on" with Warner's Forward Together PAC. Jerome Armstrong, who "served as a key member of Howard Dean's Internet team in 2004, will be Warner's Internet Director." ^*

On December 6th, 2005, Warner held the kickoff gala of his Forward Together PAC in Virginia, where he raised over $2.5 million. Since then, the PAC has raised more than $4 million.

Following the Forward Together PAC Gala, Warner headed down to South Carolina for the Democratic Dinner honoring South Carolina's four Democratic Governors where he impressed South Carolina Democrats. Warner was also the guest speaker at the Florida Democratic Party Conference on the weekend of December 9.

Warner's term as Governor expired on January 14, 2006. Since then, he has shown no plans to slow down his travels. He headlined the New Hampshire Democratic Party's 100 Club Dinner, came in a strong second in a local straw poll in Charleston, South Carolina in February, and was the cover boy on the New York Times Magazine on March 12, 2006.

Other public appearances in 2006 include Warner's serving as Commencement Speaker at Longwood University in Farmville, VA on May 13th, where he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree, and at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC on May 15th, where he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

On July 9, 2006, Alan Senitt, a Jewish activist and volunteer for Warner's campaign for President, was murdered by a group of three males and a woman, his throat slit, as he tried to defend his female companion from a reported rape attempt. The suspects fled the attack in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C. by way of a waiting vehicle. Four suspects were arrested the same day, three charged with felony murder and one with felony murder and attempted sexual assault.

References

Darman, Jonathan (May 8, 2006). "Mark Warner test-drives a new strategy for the Dems in '06". Newsweek.
Clift, Elenor (December 9, 2005). "Hillary vs Warner". Newsweek.
Gelineau, Kristen (Nov. 29, 2005). "Va. Gov. Grants Clemency for Condemned Man". The Washington Post.
Przybyla, Heidi (Nov. 10, 2005). "Warner's Star in Presidential Politics Rises on Virginia Vote". Bloomberg.com.
Polman, Nick (Nov. 10, 2005). "A new face for 2008? Yes, Virginia". The Philadelphia Inquirer.

External links