page_title: Mark Warner
section_title: Tenure
hierarchical_section_title: Mark Warner / U.S. Senate / Tenure
caption_attribution_description: President Barack Obama listens to Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., aboard Air Force One during a flight to Norfolk, Va., July 13, 2012. Seated, from left, are: Senior Advisor David Plouffe; Jon Favreau, Director of Speechwriting; and former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
context_page_description: Mark Robert Warner is an American businessman and politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Virginia, first elected in 2008. He is a member of the Democratic Party and currently a Vice Chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus and the Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
  Prior to his Senate career, Warner was the 69th Governor of Virginia holding the office from 2002 to 2006, and is the honorary chairman of the Forward Together PAC. Warner delivered the keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Apart from politics, Warner is also known for his involvement in telecommunications-related venture capital during the 1980s; he founded the firm Columbia Capital.
  In 2006, he was widely expected to pursue the Democratic nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential election; however, he announced in October 2006 that he would not run, citing a desire not to disrupt his family life. Warner was considered to be a potential vice presidential candidate, until he took himself out of consideration after winning the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate.
context_section_description: Upon arriving in the U.S. Senate in 2009, Warner was appointed to the Senate's Banking, Budget, and Commerce committees. Warner was later named to the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2011.
  In 2009, Warner voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus bill. As a member of the Budget Committee, he submitted an amendment designed to help the government track how the stimulus dollars were being spent.
  When offered the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in preparation for the 2012 election cycle, Warner declined because he wanted to keep a distance from the partisanship of the role.
  In the fall of 2012, Warner was approached by supporters about possibly leaving the Senate to seek a second four-year term as Virginia's governor. After considering the prospect, Warner announced shortly after the November 2012 elections that he had chosen to remain in the Senate because he was "all in" on finding a bipartisan solution to the country's fiscal challenges.
  Warner became the senior senator on January 3, 2013 when Jim Webb left the Senate and was replaced by Tim Kaine, who was lieutenant governor while Warner was governor.
  Warner has been identified as a radical centrist, working to foster compromise in the Senate. Warner was ranked the 10th most bipartisan member of the U.S. Senate during the 114th United States Congress in the Bipartisan Index, created by The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy to assess congressional bipartisanship. According to the same methodology, Senator Warner was the second most bipartisan Democrat in the 115th United States Congress.
caption: President Barack Obama and Tim Kaine listen to Senator Warner, aboard Air Force One, July 13, 2012
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