Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Warner has won reelection to what he has said will be his last term in the federal office.
Warner defeated his Republican challenger, retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Bert Mizusawa, in a midterm election seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress.
The AP called the race the minute the polls closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday. By 8:25 p.m., when Warner took the stage at the Hilton Mark Center in Alexandria, the Virginia Department of Elections website showed him with 59.80% of the vote and Mizusawa with 39.92%, with 119 of 133 localities reporting.
“I’m incredibly grateful to the people of Virginia for putting your trust in me one more time,” Warner said.
“This is my last campaign,” he added to boos from the crowd.
He hearkened back to his first campaign in 1996, the “famous” Warner vs. Warner race. He said then-Sen. John Warner, who defeated him, taught him that the two political parties can disagree but still find common ground and work together to move the country forward.
“God knows we need more of that in our country today,” he said.
“You’ve always got to put the people you work for first, my view is this is a job you’re kind enough to hire me and that notion of putting you first is what’s going to guide me in this last term,” he said.
“This is my last campaign, but this is not the end of the road. I start tomorrow on the next seven years, I start tomorrow on making sure this agenda becomes a reality, I start tomorrow … wait until you see an untethered Mark Warner going forward.”
Issues on his agenda include pushing for a national, single-payer health insurance program, better known as “Medicare for all,” making home ownership more affordable for first time homebuyers, putting guardrails on artificial intelligence and bringing down the cost of living.
The 71-year-old senator first announced in July that this term, his fourth in the Senate, would be his last. He said the decision was prompted by the death of his daughter, Madison, from complications of juvenile diabetes and other health issues in April at age 36.
Warner flipped the seat from Republican control in 2008 after then-Sen. John Warner — no relation — announced his intention to retire. Warner won during the blue wave that saw presidential candidate Barack Obama win the commonwealth, the first Democrat to do so since 1964.
Prior to his time in the Senate, Warner served as governor of Virginia from 2002 to 2006 and held approval ratings in his last year in office from 71% to 80%, depending on the poll.
Though favored to win reelection to the Senate early on, Warner told Cardinal News that he wasn’t taking anything for granted.
He recalled his 2014 Senate race with Republican Ed Gillespie. “I was a little too confident in the Gillespie race,” he said in a September interview. “A week out, some polls had me up by 8 points. I won by 1.”
Warner, the vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, has come out on the campaign trail and in advertisements in strong support of enforcing regulations and guardrails on artificial intelligence. He has rolled out a comprehensive AI legislative package and said he wants to act quickly to establish basic safety protocols for the technology. Congress could look at programs from other nations as an initial template.
Warner has stumped across the commonwealth throughout the race, often with other members of the Democratic ticket, but he did not commit to debate his Republican challenger. Warner’s campaign cited conflicts with scheduling.
The two candidates shared a stage at Buena Vista’s annual Labor Day event in September. That event, while not a debate, offered the candidates a platform for back-to-back speeches. They did not answer questions posed by moderators or respond to their opponent as would happen in a traditional debate.
