Story by Chris Graham 

I’ve never interviewed a rock star - but I imagine that it can’t be that much different than trying to get a few minutes in with former Virginia governor Mark Warner.

That second one, interviewing Warner, isn’t an easy task at all - I can tell you that.

And here I had thought that I had it all figured out. Warner was to be in Harrisonburg for a campaign event for Democratic Party Senate nominee Jim Webb in October. I’d been trading e-mails with Warner’s communications director, Ellen Qualls, for several weeks, when it was decided that perhaps this event would be the best chance for me to get some one-on-one time with the former governor and presidential candidate.

It seemed a natural to me - what would you expect Democrats to draw in the Shenandoah Valley to a campaign event a week or two before Election Day? Twenty people? Thirty? Maybe 50?

I arrived at Court Square Theater in downtown Harrisonburg quite shocked at what I was seeing - not only was the theater packed to the rafters, but journalists from across the state and from the Washington, D.C., press corps were also on hand to record the moment for posterity.

It was to the point where I ended up being one of the centers of attention - a reporter from The Houston Chronicle hit me up for whatever local-politics analysis I could offer, and a man from a Japanese news service formally interviewed me to get my on-the-record thoughts on the Virginia Senate race to be decided several days later.

So yeah, this is what it has to be like to be around a rock star.

Even the roadies get a piece of the action when the star’s in the zip code.

***

True to her word, Qualls motioned me to the front of the pack of reporters who wanted to interview Warner after his remarks to the Court Square Theater throng.

And here was my moment of truth. I had originally wanted to talk with Warner to get his thoughts on his 2008 presidential campaign, which by all accounts had been gaining steam when he surprised the political world in October with his announcement that he was dropping out of the race for the Democratic Party nomination.

Meaning at this point, the focus was on … why?

I’m not sure today that Warner knows the answer any more than he did the day he uttered the words.

“I came back from a vacation with family this summer assuming that I would have to check the box in terms of putting everything in my life on the backburner. And the truth is, I didn’t put it all on the backburner,” Warner told me.

“The remarkable thing was, the response on the road kept getting better and better, and I felt I was still evolving as a candidate. About the middle of September, I sat down with some close friends and family and said, Let’s talk about this. I had initially expected to make the decision around Thanksgiving. But things accelerated because there were so many folks who were starting to quit their jobs and quit school - so I set Columbus Day weekend as a time to make a decision.”

I asked next if the decision was something that he had been considering for a longer period of time than he was letting on.

“Yeah, I was headed in this direction. There was no single a-ha! moment,” Warner said. “Seeing my dad who is taking care of my mom, who has Alzheimer’s, taking my oldest daughter, who’s a junior in high school, to start looking at colleges, it just drove home the point to me that while this is the right time politically, it just didn’t feel like the right time in my gut personally.”

As I was about to pose another question, Warner grabbed the floor.

“Not that I won’t have a few second thoughts - not that I haven’t had a few second thoughts. But you make your choice, and you go forward. But as I tried to say here, I’ve got a lot of public service in me going forward. There’s more than enough problems in our country that need fixing that I think I can put some of my time and energy to,” Warner said.

***

And herein lies the speculation. Warner himself has said it - he plans to run for public office again, and there are plenty of public offices that could get his attention.

John Warner’s Senate seat seems to come up first in the discussions of many observers. John Warner, a Republican, has been the subject of much speculation about his intentions for another run at another term in 2008. Many Republicans feel that John Warner, who defeated a young Mark Warner in a 1996 re-election bid that laid the groundwork for Mark Warner’s run at the governor’s mansion five years later, will not seek what would be a sixth term on Capitol Hill.

Mark Warner has not made public whatever interest he might have in the seat - but he did make it a point to talk up the Democrats that he was able to get out to support Jim Webb on what he thinks Congress needs to be spending its time and energy on in the coming two years.

“As I traveled all across America, from California, and places that I had grown a certain affinity for, like Iowa and New Hampshire, people know that things aren’t going right in this country,” Warner told the Democratic Party gathering in Harrisonburg. “In many ways, I believe that we’re at a historical point in our country - one of those points that every great country comes to at various times in their history - whether the character of the American people, which always at moments of crisis has been willing to step up to the call, whether we’re going to make that rallying effort one more time.

“I’m 51 years old. I can’t think of a time in my life when our country has faced more problems of an enormous magnitude simultaneously,” Warner said. “Think about it for a moment. We’ve seen our standing in the world go from the aftermath of 9/11, when everyone across the world stood with us, to our standing in the world being at an all-time low. The world desperately needs strong American leadership. We’ve seen at the same time this president, this Congress, our current incumbent senator, marching in lock-step on a policy in Iraq that even our own intelligence agencies have indicated is creating more terrorists than we’re capturing or killing. And instead of welcoming an honest debate about the future of how we find a way out of Iraq that preserves America’s interests, that doesn’t allow for the expansion of Al-Qaeda, we have a president and incumbent senator who label anyone who has a different plan as somehow unpatriotic.
“We may be the only industrial country in the world that hasn’t fully connected the dots between energy policy, global warming, national security and American job creation,” Warner said. “Think about our current policy - we borrow money from China to go buy oil from countries around the world that don’t like us. Think about it - we in America could unleash our potential to be the innovation capital of the world again, the place that created alternative energy, clean energy. Think about what that could do in terms of increasing American jobs, increasing our security - and it might just save the planet along the way.”

At another Webb campaign stop in Staunton on the eve of the election, Warner, a centrist Democrat who as governor was well-regarded by members of both parties for his efforts at promoting bipartisanship, made it clear that he wasn’t just talking about Republicans having to shape up or risk being shipped out.

“My biggest fear is that if the Democrats take control is if they use the control to be vindictive as opposed to trying to look at solutions,” Warner told reporters after a get-together at a local eatery, Wright’s Dairy Rite, that has long been a favorite hangout for visiting politicians.

“Americans, regardless of political stripe, know that things aren’t going right in the country. They want people who are going to try to get things fixed,” Warner said. “I think Americans are ready to step up for a little shared sacrifice. I think they’re willing to do their part - but it can’t be a partisan answer. It can’t be a Democratic answer or Republican answer - somebody’s got to lay out how America is going to get fixed. I think I’ve still got some ideas - and hope to be engaged in that debate.

“People want a change. They know in their gut, regardless of what party, that things aren’t going right in Washington. And it’s not just the issues - but it’s that this Congress has a record of corruption that’s unparalleled. That’s just not right. These folks are hired to do the people’s business - and if we get a new crowd in there, if they don’t do it, they should get fired, too,” Warner said.

So there’s the Senate race. Also a possibility for Warner is another run at the governor’s mansion in 2009.

I tried to ask Warner in Harrisonburg about his interest in running for governor in ‘09 - reminding him of something that he had told me in a December 2005 interview about how he wished that he could have had more time in Richmond, given that it had taken him a couple of years in his single four-year term to learn on the job how to be governor.

Virginia governors, by law, cannot succeed themselves in the office.

Only one elected governor, Mills Godwin, has run for and been elected to a second nonconsecutive term.

Warner gave me an uncharacteristically short answer to my query on this topic.

“I’d never rule that out. I loved being governor,” Warner said.

***

Which gets us back to the question that many Virginia pols have been asking since Warner’s 2004 entree into the national-politics scene with the speculation about the interest of ‘04 Democratic Party presidential nominee John Kerry in having Warner on his ticket.

Will we see Mark Warner running for president in 2008?

I asked him that question in Staunton - and his answer, roundabout as it was, makes me wonder what might be going through his head.

“What surprised me, even in the Iowas and New Hampshires, I thought the hard-core Democratic activists would look at me kind of with a jaundiced eye, Well, Warner, you were a business guy, and you work in a bipartisan way, and hold that against me,” Warner said.

“I think that most Americans realize we’ve got big problems in this country - and it’s going to take leadership that is going to advocate more than incremental change. And if we simply go from a 51-49 Republican-driven administration to a 51-49 Democratic administration, we’re not going to get anything done. You’ve got to build a broad enough consensus in this country for big change. I think the model was (Franklin D.) Roosevelt in the ’30s. Not everything that he tried worked - but he tried things because there was a real crying out in the country for change,” Warner said.

“My biggest problem with this president is not all the policy decisions - but in the aftermath of 9/11, in the aftermath of Katrina, he’s never asked the American people for a little shared sacrifice. And people say, Well, does that mean taxes? No, it doesn’t mean taxes at all. It could mean something involving energy. I think Americans would all do their part if there was a national purpose. That’s what people respect about Ronald Reagan. He brought us together in a national purpose,” Warner said.

This could be somebody who is interested in running for the Senate - though I have to think that with his success in helping Jim Webb get elected it isn’t going to be as attractive being the junior senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia as it would have been being the senior senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Gov. Mark Warner II

also has a ring to it - though it seems pretty definite to me that Warner has his eyes squarely on making a dent on the national scene in some way.

I wasn’t able to get much from him on the post that I see as being next in his future - the vice presidency - in either of my interviews last fall.

“I would be foolish to rule anything out at this point” was the most that I could get out of him on the topic.

This, of course, creates a problem for writers like me who want to try to get people to think of Warner as something of a political rock star.

I mean, seriously - a rock star playing second banana?

Filed under: 8-January 2007 Issue