U.S. Senator Mark Warner was late to his own party. But he still got there.
Warner hosted more than 300 Democratic well-to-does and politicos as they cheered on former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine on Tuesday evening at a fundraiser at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria.
In what is likely to be a preview of his stump speech for a 2012 run for U.S. Senate, Kaine told the crowd — which included local politicians such as U.S. Rep. Jim Moran and one-time (and possibly future) gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe — that “we’ve got challenges in America, but Virginia’s got solutions.”
“I drew the straw of being governor during the worst economy since the 1930s – I had to make billions of dollars worth of budget cuts,” he said. “But we kept our unemployment rate [below] the national average, our medican income high, we were named best state for business, we attracted businesses to Virginia even in a tough time – you can do cuts, but [you’ve] go to do them the right way.”
He also noted how Virginia has morphed from a “political irrelevancy” in national politics since he moved to the state in 1984.
“We are now one of the two or three key battleground states in this country – how do you feel about that?” he said to the cheering crowd.
Warner rushed in late to sing Kaine’s praises, though to be fair, he had been busy voting on a measure to repeal tax breaks for oil companies (that ultimately failed to overcome a filibuster.) And he is certainly busy with other issues as well.
But he also cautioned Kaine – who is on a collision course with former Senator George Allen in the race – about what could lie ahead of him.
“It is a ways to go from being ‘his Excellency’ to junior senator,” Warner said, elicting laughter from the crowd. “I can say that to him now — I couldn’t say that while we were trying to convince him to run.”
