Warner still generates strong interest

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.