Warner dismisses notion that he’s playing it safe – Richmond Times

WASHINGTON — Hours after Republican Ed Gillespie conceded in a nail-biting election nearly a year ago, Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., returned home to Alexandria to consider what had just happened.

Warner, who had left office as Virginia’s 69th governor riding a wave of a 71 percent job approval, escaped defeat by a mere 17,727 votes, or less than 1 percentage point.

It was a humbling result for Warner, who in 2006 briefly pondered a White House bid. And since that Election Day in November 2014, when nine Democrats were ousted in a wave that handed Republicans the majority in the U.S. Senate, the man who is known for his ability to make deals with his political foes has trod more carefully, avoiding stepping on legislative land mines, an analyst says.

“Warner has been very cautious. His near-defeat has chastened him, and he knows his long honeymoon with Virginia voters is over,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Warner’s approval rating has not yet returned to its pre-election high of 63 percent in January 2014. A September poll by Christopher Newport University had him at 53 percent approval, with 26 percent disapproving and 21 percent unsure.

“He hasn’t overreacted — his voting record hasn’t turned noticeably more conservative,” Sabato said. “The first rule of winning is to keep your base happy; primary challenges can be deadly,” Sabato said.

For example, take his vote on the nuclear deal with Iran. Few doubted that Warner would back the diplomatic agreement, brokered on behalf of President Barack Obama.

But he waited to publicly announce his support until the president had the votes needed in the Senate to preserve the agreement.

During the Senate campaign, Republicans like Gillespie had claimed that the Affordable Care Act “wouldn’t have passed without Mark Warner’s vote.”

“Every Democrat who voted for Obamacare has been roasted as ‘the deciding vote,’ ” Sabato said. “Good politicians learn quickly. If you look at the list of Democrats who declared for the Iran deal early, the vast majority are safe and in blue states.”

Some on the other side of the aisle say Warner has ignored the message Virginia voters sent him in 2014.

“Even though Senator Warner was nearly voted out of office last year, despite outspending Ed Gillespie by a huge margin, he still has not learned his lesson,” said John Findlay, executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia.

“He still votes with President Barack Obama over 90 percent of the time and takes his marching orders directly from (Senate Minority Leader) Harry Reid.”

But as so often in politics, the truth lies somewhere in between.

The Washington workday

In an interview last week at his office on the fourth floor of the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, Warner made a dismissive gesture when asked if he has become more careful nearly a year after the election.

“I get hired to do what I think is in the best interest of Virginia and our country,” Warner said. “At the end of my term, voters get to decide whether they are going to rehire me. I’m glad Virginians rehired me.”

Warner said that as a senator and former governor, he is used to taking tough positions.

“I remember when I said Virginia’s budget was in a structural deficit, and I had every political adviser around saying you can’t take on Virginia’s tax code when you got a two-to-one Republican legislature. But we got it done,” he said. “If you don’t want to take tough votes or positions, you shouldn’t sign up for these jobs.”

Early on the day of the interview, Warner and 77 of his colleagues in the Senate — including several Republicans — voted to pass a Continuing Resolution to keep the government open through Dec. 11.

Warner spent just several minutes on the Senate floor before heading to a hearing of a Senate Banking subcommittee before meeting with other Senate members behind closed doors to discuss international tax reform.

“It’s a little bit anticlimactic today,” Warner said. “After the speaker resigned, everybody knew we would get through this hurdle-of-October run, we wouldn’t go through this stupidity of another government shutdown.”

Next, Warner sat down for a 20-minute interview with a camera crew from the College of William and Mary’s Lewis B. Puller Jr. Veterans Benefits Clinic.

With no time for a midday lunch break, Warner chewed a turkey sandwich with cheese and avocado and sipped a Diet Coke while following up with a staffer on a recent entrepreneurship roundtable in Richmond.

At his Capitol Hill office, Warner is known as a challenging boss who pushes those who work for him. His staffers — there are about 30 in Washington and more at his several district offices across Virginia — say he is tough but fair and has high expectations. His drive sets the pace.

As an avid biker who rides up to 50 miles on weekends if his schedule permits, Warner, who turned 60 in December, tries to build a workout into his workday at least a couple of times a week.

“I’m a much happier camper if I can get on the exercise bike for 30 minutes. I’ve got a place to work out at my house, too,” he said.

Not much of an early riser, Warner considers himself “a late-night person” who tries to socialize with other senators after work, especially Republicans. “I still think politics is half policy, half trusting relationships,” he said.

And unlike most of his colleagues, who travel hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to their home states on the weekends, Warner and his wife, Lisa Collis, live just on the other side of the Potomac.

“I realize I’m pretty darn lucky I get to sleep in my own bed every night,” he said.

Technocrat roots

After last year’s Republican sweep in the Senate, Warner has moved up the ranks.

“The job in this new term is, (on) one hand I am higher up the food chain in seniority, I’m in the quote unquote leadership group,” he said. “I’ve got some good committee mixes as anybody in Congress. That is all exciting and invigorating.”

In the legislative arena, Warner has found his own niche, pushing issues that are somewhat outside Washington’s mainstream and the realm of partisan bickering.

For much of the year, Warner has continued to push for ways to lower student loan debt. He has worked to strengthen data breach and information-sharing legislation.

He has vowed to improve America’s overhead satellite abilities, which as a “former techie” he sees as one of the most important components of national defense. Motivated by his late mother’s 11-year struggle with Alzheimer’s disease, Warner also has drafted legislation dealing with end-of-life issues and care planning.

And then there is his latest cause — helping millennials struggling to make a steady living without a social safety net in what some have dubbed the Gig Economy.

“This is more along the lines of how he ran and won the governorship in 2001,” Sabato said.

“Warner was seen as more of a technocrat than an ideologue, and the issues he’s stressing are a return to his roots.”

But to Warner, his more recent work is focused on thinking outside the box.

After the interview, Warner met with two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington, who has served as the national spokesperson for Boys Girls Clubs of America since 1993 — an organization that Warner has supported for decades.

He sat at the head of the table, flanked by Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, D-Va., and Washington. They chatted about the Boys Girls Clubs and about rural Virginia, as the actor talked about spending much time as a youngster on his grandfather’s farm in Dillwyn, a small town in Buckingham County.

After 20 minutes, Warner stood up to shake Washington’s hand. Downstairs, his SUV was waiting to take him downtown, where he was a speaker at The Atlantic’s Washington Ideas Forum.

Governor or senator?

At his Capitol Hill office, Warner sits in the chair he used as governor and behind a reproduction of the desk he used as Virginia’s chief executive from 2002 until 2006.

“I loved being governor. It was a great job,” Warner says. “It was a moment in time when I had the opportunity to work with some remarkable people of both parties in the legislature.”

On Capitol Hill, however, things work at a different pace than in Richmond. During his first two years in Washington, Warner said he felt a “kind of relentless frustration” with not having things get done.

“I do know that there is the notion that the Senate operates on a different timeline. When I was governor, every day that I didn’t get something done was a day I wasn’t going to get back.”

In time, he became accustomed to the different pace and he is happy with the job Virginians have elected him to do.

“I’ve got a freedom to do this job that most of my colleagues don’t have. I had a good business career before I got in this, I have some financial flexibility, I’ve got issues that I am working on that I’m fascinated with,” Warner said.

“The ability in this job to take on the issues at greater breadth is really a great, great opportunity as well.”