Virginia senator Mark Warner claimed he did not offer a federal judgeship to the daughter of a Democratic state senator who was about to resign, but he did admit that they “brainstormed” about the idea.
At Monday night’s U.S. Senate debate between Warner and his GOP challenger, Ed Gillespie, the Democratic incumbent answered questions raised by a recent Washington Post story regarding the resignation of Virginia state senator Phillip Puckett earlier this year. Several political figures in the state, including Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe, are under scrutiny for potentially trying to influence Puckett’s decision to resign with political offers to him and his family. The Post reported that Warner called Puckett’s son three days before the resignation to discuss “an appointment to the federal bench as well as a potential corporate position” for Puckett’s daughter, Martha Puckett Ketron.
At Monday’s debate, Gillespie brought up the report, arguing it showed Warner to be a much more partisan senator than the Democrat claims to be. Warner responded to the report from the Post:
“When I heard that Phillip was considering resigning from the Senate, I reached out to his son, Joseph, to find out what was going on. During that conversation, we brainstormed about possible opportunities for his sister,” Warner said. “In that brainstorming, we talked about a lot of different options, but let me make clear. I did not offer her a job nor would I offer her any kind of position.”
One of those “different options” Warner discussed, as the original Post report noted, was a position at a Canadian company called CGI, which the paper describes as a “high-tech firm Warner helped lure to Southwest Virginia when he was governor a decade ago.” Most famously, CGI is the tech firm contracted by the federal government (with apparently no other bids) to develop the federal health insurance exchange website mandated by Obamacare. That website experienced countless technical problems starting a year ago with the rollout of the law.
