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Mark Warner declares victory over Ed Gillespie in tight U.S. Senate race in Virginia Warner claims victory over Gillespie in Virginia Senate race
(35 minutes later)
U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner declared victory late Tuesday over Republican challenger Ed Gillespie in race that dented the former Democratic governor’s indomitable image. U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D) declared victory over Ed Gillespie (R) late Tuesday in a remarkably close contest for a second term that is likely to tarnish the Democrat’s image as an untouchable force in Virginia politics.
With 99 percent of precincts counted, Warner was leading Gillespie by more than 12,000 votes out of more than 2 million cast. The contest was so close that Warner’s opponent declined to concede, but the Democrat promised to serve a second term working across the aisle with a new Republican majority in the Senate.
“It was a hard-fought race. It went a little longer than we thought,” Warner told supporters just before midnight. “I want to congratulate Ed Gillespie. He ran a hard-fought campaign.” “It was a hard-fought race. It went a little longer than we thought,” Warner said. “I’ll work with anyone — Democrat, Republican, independent, you name it — if we’re going to make sure we get our country’s problems fixed.”
Warner thanked voters for sending him back to Washington to “get the job done and actually govern.” The outcome represented a shocking reversal of Warner’s sweeping victory in 2008, which first propelled the former governor into the Senate. A recount is possible, and Gillespie didn’t rule out requesting one in remarks to supporters late Tuesday.
Gillespie declined to concede. "Let’s just stay together for a few more days, maybe longer,” he said, calling for patience and adding that he wants to be “respectful of the voters.” “Obviously, we are going to accept whatever is the final outcome,” the Republican said. “But I owe it to the voters of Virginia, owe it to all of you, to make sure that the outcome is final before we make any final decisions on this end.”
“We are going to accept whatever is the final outcome,” he said. The race came against a national backdrop that was expected to be bad for Democrats, especially for incumbents with close ties with President Obama and his trouble-plagued health-care law. But Warner had been expected to escape that fate, with polls giving him an increasingly narrow but consistent lead through the final days of the race.
In Virginia, the trailing candidate can request a recount if the difference between the two candidates is one percent or less of the total votes cast. In this case that would translate to more than 20,000 votes. Brian W. Schoeneman, Fairfax County Electoral Board secretary, said such a count is possible. “We’re in recount territory,” he said. The moderate image that twice carried Warner to victory perhaps no longer plays well in a state and country that have grown more polarized since his race for governor in 2001. He lost support in rural areas that once solidly backed him while failing to inspire Democrats to turn out in droves.
Gillespie’s unrelenting attack on Warner’s voting record in support of Obama proved effective against Warner, who has been Virginia’s most popular politician for more than a decade. Gillespie slammed Warner for voting with the president 97 percent of the time, including for the Affordable Care Act. This year, the senator saw his support in rural Virginia drop off sharply. He had forged ties to Southside and Southwest even before he ran for governor, earning goodwill in the economically depressed regions as a job-creating entrepreneur. Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, a Democratic strategist who helped craft Warner’s rural strategy for his gubernatorial run 13 years ago, attributed that drop to antipathy toward the president, in part racially motivated.
Warner has long billed himself as a business-friendly moderate. He won his first race for Senate in a landslide in 2008. “It breaks my heart to say it, because these are my people, but racism was a huge factor in this,” he said. “I think in many areas of rural Virginia, racism is still prevalent, and they dislike Obama more than they like Mark Warner.”
But, this time, Warner was tagged with the perceived sins of Washington. Republicans have said the president’s policies and Warner’s support for them — especially a perceived “war on coal” and the Affordable Care Act — soured voters on both politicians.
In Arlington County, Ronelle Matney, 63, a consultant and self-identified independent, and her husband, Bud, 75, who retired from the U.S. Air Force Reserve, voted for Gillespie, citing concerns about the economy and a host of other national and international issues. They said the Democratic leadership has let the country down with its handling of Benghazi, the IRS, Ebola and the Islamic State militant group. “I like Gillespie. I think he’s a smart businessman. If I’m being truthful about it, I also like Warner. I just wish he was a Republican,” said Keith Davis, a retired Hanover County resident who voted for Gillespie. “Vote for him and you vote for Obama, and I don’t vote for Obama.”
“It’s time for a change,” they each said. Gillespie’s chief line of attack was that Warner’s moderate image was just that — one that did not match reality. He said Warner had voted with the president 97 percent of the time, most notably for the Affordable Care Act.
But Brian Entzminger, who works in sales, was among those who put Warner over the top. Voting in Crystal City, his reason was clear, though his goal would prove to be out of reach: “I don’t want the Republicans to control the Senate,” he said. That message seemed to convince voters that a man who has long billed himself as a business-friendly moderate was now too closely associated with national Democrats.
Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, claimed at a rally Tuesday that momentum was on his side — taking note of narrowing polls and the energy of a volunteer squad he dubbed his “G-Force.” His supporters buzzed with hopeful excitement at his victory party as the first returns showed the Republican up. At a ballroom at an Embassy Suites hotel in Springfield, they sipped wine and kept their fingers crossed. Late in the campaign, Warner also became tainted by a scandal related to the abrupt resignation of a Democratic state senator. Warner, one of several top Virginia Democrats who tried to dissuade the legislator from quitting the evenly divided state Senate, had discussed the possibility of a federal judgeship or private job for the lawmaker’s daughter.
Polls had suggested that Warner, a former governor running for his second term in the Senate, would be reelected despite a tough national environment for Democrats. He has aimed for centrist consensus in the Senate. He also outspent his rival by a two-to-one margin and benefited from more outside money. Little national money has flowed to Virginia this year, in contrast to the tens of millions spent two years ago when Timothy M. Kaine (D) defeated George Allen (R). Warner attracted nearly twice as much as Gillespie in independent expenditures, and his campaign outspent Gillespie’s by the same margin. Gillespie, a prodigious fundraiser who helped create one of the country’s biggest super PACs, found himself running as the underfunded underdog. “Hard work beats big money every time, and we’re going to prove it tomorrow,” Gillespie told supporters at a rally Monday.
Outside the ballroom where Warner supporters gathered, Daphne Steinberg, 45, of Fairfax County, said: “I think he’s his own man. He’s not a guy that’s going to let someone else’s opinion necessarily dictate his. On the other hand, he’s a guy who listens to other people so he’s very middle of the road. To me the Republicans seem to be people of great extremes and the Democrats aren’t. That’s one of the big reasons I go for them – I think they are more prepared to reach across the aisle,” she said. An onslaught of negative ads run by the Warner campaign in recent weeks hinted at concern that Gillespie was gaining ground.
Even if Warner ultimately prevails, the close race will tarnish his image as an untouchable force in Virginia politics. Six years ago, Warner beat former governor James S. Gilmore III (R) by over thirty points, sweeping all but a handful of the state’s counties. Warner prides himself on his attention to the southwest, a largely rural and conservative corner of the state. Yet even his supporters there, including several former Republican lawmakers, say Obama’s unpopularity with those voters has weighed Warner down. Warner left the governor’s mansion in 2006 with record-high approval ratings, and in the race to succeed retiring Sen. John W. Warner (R) two years later crushed former governor James S. Gilmore III (R). He won with nearly two-thirds of the vote, dominating every region of the state, even rural areas where Republican presidential hopeful John McCain soundly beat Obama.
Warner built a career on appealing across party lines. As governor in 2004, he got moderate Republicans in Virginia’s General Assembly to go along with a then-unprecedented tax hike, which allowed him to pour money into education. In the Senate, he helped lead the bipartisan “Gang of Six” that tried to attack the national deficit. Victory would return Warner to a job that the Nextel co-founder has often found frustrating because of partisan gridlock. On the campaign trail, he has promised to devote the next two years to a forceful push for bipartisan solutions, saying he’s learned from a somewhat difficult experience.
Warner left the governor’s mansion in 2006 with record-high approval ratings, and in the race to succeed retiring Sen. John W. Warner two years later, Warner crushed former governor James S. Gilmore III (R). He won by nearly two-thirds, dominating every region of the state, even rural areas where Republican presidential hopeful John McCain soundly beat Obama. Warner supporters say they appreciate his middle-of-the-road approach. “I think he’s his own man. He’s not a guy that’s going to let someone else’s opinion necessarily dictate his,” Daphne Steinberg of Fairfax said outside the senator’s election night party in Alexandria. “On the other hand, he’s a guy who listens to other people.” Despite being “richer than God,” Warner never seemed out of touch, she said.
In declaring victory Tuesday, Warner sought to keep his earlier work, and image, alive. Libertarian Robert Sarvis, who ran for governor in 2013 and won over a surprising 6.5 percent of voters, was less of a factor in this race, taking less than 3 percent of the vote in election night totals.
“The commitment I’ll make to you is that I’ll go back to Washington and recognize that we’ve got to find that common ground. I know most of us here are Democrats, but neither political party has a monopoly on truth or virtue or patriotism,” Warner said. “And in this new Senate I’ll work with anyone — Democrat, Republican, Independent, you name it — if we’re gonna make sure we get our country’s problems fixed.” Brian W. Schoeneman, Fairfax County Electoral Board secretary, said county officials are already preparing for a possible recount.
Warner ticked off a list of priorities: pass a budget, pass a transportation bill, reform the tax code and create jobs, and reduce student debt. “It’s getting tight,” Schoeneman said. “We’re in recount territory.”
“Yes, I’m gonna suit up one more time for whatever group, gang or cabal, whatever it takes to make sure we get our nation’s balance sheet fixed and don’t leave the next generation with 17 trillion in debt. We can do this together, Americans,” Warner said. In Virginia, the trailing candidate can request a recount if the difference between the two candidates is not more than 1 percent of the total votes cast. In this case, that would translate to roughly 20,000 votes.
Even a near victory could be a significant boost for Gillespie’s future political career. Political observers say he is well positioned for another statewide bid, having earned GOP goodwill with his willingness to take on someone consistently ranked the state’s most popular political figure. Rose Mansfield, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Elections, said there were problems in some parts of the state early Tuesday with how voting machines were displaying candidates’ names.
“He charged the hill no one else dared to charge and he did a really good job,” said Ray Allen, a longtime Republican strategist who did some work for Gillespie. “When he announced, Warner had an approval rating of 60 percent. That takes real guts.” Election night results showed an electorate of over 2 million, about even with the 2010 election but far below the 3.8 million who came out to vote in 2012, the Department of Elections said.
During the campaign, Gillespie acknowledged Warner’s popularity as governor but invoked it again and again as a backhanded barb: “Governor Warner wouldn’t recognize Senator Warner today.” Gillespie supporters expressed disappointment that the national Republican Party had not put more resources into the state.
Gillespie built his campaign around the notion that Warner’s “radical centrist” image no longer fit. “I don’t think the money was put behind [Gillespie] that should have been put behind him,” Carolyn Roy, a retired flight attendant from Virginia’s Northern Neck, said from the Republican’s election night party.
Gillespie came to the race with a deep political résumé. He helped write the Republicans’ “Contract with America” in the 1990s, served as counselor to President George W. Bush and led the Republican National Committee. But he had little name recognition. A Roanoke College poll in early March had him down 30 points. The margin had narrowed to 7 points in a Christopher Newport University poll released Friday. The elections also put Virginia’s new voter identification law to the test. Many members of voting rights groups were at the polls to monitor the process and help people comply with the new photo identification rule, among the nation’s strictest. The new requirement tripped up some voters, according to organizations monitoring polling places. By early afternoon, Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of Virginia New Majority, said she had not heard of any reports of voters being denied the right to vote because they lacked proper identification.
Throughout the race, Warner portrayed Gillespie as a Washington insider and “partisan warrior” who would only contribute to Washington’s dysfunction. Warner made an issue of some clients represented by Gillespie’s lobbying firm, including the failed energy giant Enron and an Ivory Coast dictator. Also on the ballot in Virginia were all 11 congressional seats — including a hotly contested seat to replace retiring Rep. Frank R. Wolf in the Northern Virginia suburbs. Republican Barbara J. Comstock easily defeated Democrat John W. Foust — an outcome that may have hurt Warner in a portion of the state where he may have expected to perform well.
A victory would return Warner to a job that the Nextel co-founder has often found frustrating due to partisan gridlock. He has spoken more fondly of his time as governor a decade ago, often joking that he misses being addressed as “his excellency.” On the campaign trail, he has promised to devote his next two years to a forceful push for bipartisan solutions, saying he’s learned from experience.
“I don’t think he has an interest in being a back bencher for 25 years,” said former Virginia Commonwealth University professor Bob Holsworth. “I think you’re going to see Warner really try to stake out that middle ground ... to bring answers to the questions that go completely unaddressed out there – the entitlement reform issues, reforming health care to make it work better.”
An onslaught of negative ads run by the Warner campaign in recent weeks hinted at concern that Gillespie was gaining ground despite a lack of substantial support from national Republicans.
Susan Svrluga, Michael Alison Chandler, Justin Jouvenal, Miles Parks, Antonio Olivo and Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.