The announcement that John Warner will not seek re-election will certainly open the stage for a totally open race that should be interesting as Virginia's increasingly moderate cities and suburban areas are trending away from the no tax increase (no matter how bad the highways get), anti-gay, Second Amendment shill of the GOP. It will be most interesting to see who emerges as the candidate for each party. Attorney General Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell, who represents the worse aspects of the anti-gay GOP, has had his eye on running for Governor and no one else immediately springs to mind on the GOP side. I have no idea who might run on the Democrat side, although former Gov. Mark Warner would likely do well since he was popular while in office. Hopefully, whoever wins next year will be as principled as Warner has proven himself to be. Here's the available information on Warner's announcement:U.S. Sen. John Warner said today that he will not seek a sixth term. The 80-year-old Republican announced his decision outside the historic rotunda at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Warner is a U.Va. Law School graduate. Warner, secretary of the Navy from 1972 to 1974, jumped into Virginia politics in 1978, when he won the state's closest U.S. Senate race ever. He has since become the state's most popular officeholder, according to opinion polls, and its all-time leading vote-getter.
When he took office, Warner was best known as the husband of movie star Elizabeth Taylor, whom he wed in 1976 and divorced in 1982. As a senator, he immersed himself in defense issues and by the late 1980s had emerged as a leading Republican spokesman on national security. He was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1999 to 2001 and again from 2003 until last January.
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