"But then again, Mark Warner is different."
Governor Warner is in Roanoke today, another stop on his Hometown Days across Virginia. After the Governor visited the Optical Cable facilities, WSLS Channel 10’s Chief Political Correspondent Jay Warren wrote this on their website, summarizing what we are seeing on these Hometown Days.
Mark Warner will be in town on Monday and Tuesday. While here, he’ll be touring several local businesses, shaking hands at local restaurants, and speaking to students at Radford. These are fairly standard campaign stops and usually don’t elicit all that much interest, much less excitement. But, Mark Warner is different.
Generally former governors and even political candidates fight for attention. They sometimes beg for media coverage and hope to get decent sized crowds at rallies and meet-and-greets. This is true no matter the political party. It’s hard to get people’s attention when you’re out of office or campaigning almost a year prior to an election (particularly one that doesn’t yet seem overly competitive). The public and media have short attention spans. But that doesn’t appear to be a problem for Mark Warner. He is different.
I have had no fewer than a half dozen random people ask me if I knew Warner was coming to town this week. These weren’t political operatives or party leaders. Instead, in most cases, they were average folks. And, they all seemed genuinely excited Warner would be here.
On Monday at his first stop at Optical Cable Warner got very favorable treatment. One worker even hugged him like a long-lost relative. She later called him Senator-elect Warner. Remember, it’s 10 months before we actually vote on that Senate contest! It wasn’t rock star treatment, but there was noticeable energy.
Warner left office with sky-high approval ratings, flirted with a presidential bid, and is now the Democratic nominee for the US Senate seat being vacated by John Warner. All of that ensured Warner’s name would stay in front of the public. Today, Mark Warner seemed just as important and popular as he did in 2004/2005 at the height of his success as our governor. That’s not easy to do two years out of office. But then again, Mark Warner is different.
Mark Warner is different. Not many Virginia governors have the record of success that has made him one of the most popular governors in Virginia history. But Governor Warner worked hard to bring a different approach to Richmond. He worked with his Republican counterparts to get things done for Virginians. He brought jobs to rural Virginia and made historic investments in education, public safety and health care.
It’s that difference that makes Governor Warner so popular and makes voters so enthusiastic about sending him to the U.S. Senate. It’s this type of excitement that we keep seeing on our Hometown Day visits around the state.