Mark Warner opens major campaign tour in SWVA

As befits a man who rose to prominence in the cell phone business, Mark Warner is now re-connecting.

The former Virginia Governor campaigned in Roanoke this morning at the new Fire Station #1 on Franklin Road. It's part of a big campaign tour.

Warner will speak at Monument Terrace in Lynchburg at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, the seventh stop on a four-day, 11-city tour.

“I’m already tired,” joked Warner’s press secretary, Kevin Hall, after the opening event in Abingdon on Sunday. “This is kind of ambitious, but Gov. Warner feels it’s important to re-connect with a lot of the folks who supported him seven years ago. We started in Abingdon because that’s where he kicked off his campaign in 2001.”

One of the more popular Virginia governors from 2002-2006, Warner is in the process of re-inventing himself as a possible Sen. Mark Warner. A Democrat, he’ll likely face another former chief executive of the commonwealth, Republican Jim Gilmore, this fall for the Senate seat vacated by the retirement of John Warner.

In Lynchburg, Warner plans to talk about national defense, terrorism and the war in Iraq. He chose Monument Terrace as the site, Hall said, because “we know that there is a group of veterans that shows up every day to show support for the troops.”

It’s actually every Friday, but members of that group will undoubtedly be in attendance on Tuesday. Mayor Joan Foster, former State Sen. Elliott Schewel, former Lynchburg Del. Preston Bryant (now Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources) and current Del. Shannon Valentine will offer comments in support of Warner.

“He did a lot for veterans while he was governor,” Hall said. “He was very much an activist governor in a lot of ways.”

And, apparently, an active candidate. He will come to Lynchburg from Martinsville, where he will speak to Henry Countians during breakfast at a Main Street restaurant at 8:30. Then comes Lynchburg, then Charlottesville at 2:15 and Harrisonburg at 5.

Today is even more of a logistical nightmare. Warner starts the day in Roanoke at 8 a.m., speaks at Norfolk’s Waterside at 11:15, then visits Richmond and Alexandria.

In Abingdon on Sunday, Warner told a late-afternoon audience crowd gathered at a middle school for a Democratic barbecue: “Southwestern Virginia is a part of Virginia that often doesn’t get a fair shake from Richmond. I’ll work with anyone to make sure everyone gets a fair shot,” he said.

The soundtrack was supplied by a bluegrass band, Wires and Wood.

According to an Associated Press account: “Warner also dusted off other familiar themes from his earlier run. He railed against partisan gridlock in Washington and promised to become a ‘radical centrist’ in a sharply split Congress.

‘“Washington watched as jobs were shipped overseas,’ he said to an ovation from a crowd drawn from a region that watched coal mining jobs dwindle in the 1980s and ’90s.

“He also took a pointed poke at his Republican predecessor as governor, Jim Gilmore, though never spoke Gilmore’s name. He criticized Gilmore for a revenue shortfall in the state budget that, by 2004, was estimated at $6 billion.”