Mark Warner is asking voters to give him one more term in the Senate, and he is doing it with the campaign now in its final stretch against Republican Bert Mizusawa. Election Day is Nov. 3, and early in-person voting continues through Oct. 31, leaving little time for the Democrat to make his case that his record still matters to Southwest Virginia.
Warner spent a Tuesday afternoon three weeks before Election Day at Feeding Southwest Virginia's Community Solutions Center, where 21 people sat with him for an hour and talked about hunger. He told them that in one out of five families with kids in Southwest Virginia, somebody is going hungry, calling that outrageous in a country as wealthy as this one. That message is now part of how Warner is trying to connect his reelection bid to the daily strain voters feel in the Roanoke Valley.
The race is not just about Warner's long résumé. He won his Senate seat in 2008 after serving as governor from 2001 to 2006, and he now says he is seeking a fourth and final Senate term. In Washington, he has been a vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and sits on the Finance, Banking, Budget and Rules committees, a list he uses to argue that he still has work left to do for Virginia.
His local argument rests on more than speeches. Warner has kept a regional office in downtown Roanoke at 120 Luck Avenue SW, and his campaign points to the links he has built between Washington and the region. He helped build a coalition with Republicans Rob Portman and Lamar Alexander and independent Angus King starting in 2017, and that effort helped move the Restore Our Parks Act forward. He also has tied his record to the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Salem VA Medical Center and data centers in Botetourt County, all issues that reach into everyday life in Southwest Virginia.
But Warner's appeal also carries a note of frustration. He told the group he wished he could come in and give an uplifting report about Washington, and said he did not have one. That leaves voters with a sharper choice: accept an incumbent who says he still wants to keep fighting for the region, or look to Mizusawa for a different path that has not yet been spelled out in the same detail. With only days left before Oct. 31 voting ends and Nov. 3 arrives, Warner's case comes down to whether his long record still feels like a promise, or a warning, to the people he wants to represent again.
