That Was 29 Years Ago.

by Kerry Dougherty

Lucky us.

Democrat Senator and full-time whiner, Mark Warner, announced Tuesday that he’s running for a fourth term.

Sigh.

This 70-year-old multi-millionaire businessman has been sitting in the Senate (when he isn’t in his car making cringy videos about how much he hates Trump) since 2008.

Although he initially presented himself as a moderate “Blue Dog”Democrat, it wasn’t long before he revealed himself to be a partisan hack. Six years into his Senate career, during a dogfight over control of the Virginia State Senate, Warner jumped into the fray and nearly lost the next election.

In an October 2014 column headlined “So Long Mr. Above-It-all, Warner Is A Political Operative After All” I expressed my, ah, disappointment.

Just like that, it’s gone.

Sen. Mark Warner’s carefully crafted persona, that is. The bipartisan brand he relentlessly burnished from his earliest days in the Governor’s Mansion has now all but evaporated. So has his image as an ineffective, but guileless, U.S. senator whose specialty was reaching across the aisle. Continue reading.