Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 14, 1995 TAG: 9505150012
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When Mark Warner talks about leading Virginia into the 21st century, he starts by talking about his efforts to bring a big-league baseball team to Northern Virginia - and winds up talking about how rural communities need to be wired to the Internet.
Home runs on a baseball diamond and "home pages" on the world's global computer network may not seem to have much in common. But to Virginia Democratic Party Chairman Mark Warner, they're the highlights of his plan to remake the Old Dominion's image - as well as key planks of a campaign platform.
So U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., is busy trying to engineer a new interstate highway route through Blacksburg, Roanoke and Martinsville? Mark Warner is talking up the information highway and what it means to Virginia's role in the world. "We can be the technological leaders of the 21st century," he declares. "That's the good news. The bad news is, nobody knows about it."
Meet the other Warner who's running for the U.S. Senate.
Incumbent John Warner is the one who's getting all the attention as he barnstorms the state in a way he hasn't done in years, in preparation for a long-awaited primary challenge next year by conservatives angered about his refusal to support GOP Senate nominee Oliver North in 1994 and lieutenant governor hopeful Mike Farris in 1993.
Mark Warner is keeping a schedule just as busy, if nowhere near as publicized, as he charts his own political road map to 1996. Last week, he said that, come June 24, he's resigning the party chairmanship he's held since 1993 to devote more time to his undeclared Senate campaign.
It'll be one unlike any Virginians have seen.
For one thing, there's Warner himself. Virginians are accustomed these days to seeing their statewide candidates spring from the Washington suburbs with no previous electoral experience - North, Farris, U.S. Sen. Charles Robb and Lt. Gov. Don Beyer come immediately to mind.
What makes the 40-year-old Warner different is his background as a high-tech entrepreneur who made his considerable fortune in a business that barely existed a decade ago - cellular telephones.
As a young staffer for the Democratic National Committee in the early 1980s, Warner didn't even have a place to stay; he hauled his belongings around in a 1965 Buick. Now Virginia Business magazine puts his net worth at more than $100 million.
"He's got the financial capabilities of a Ross Perot, coupled with the intellectual capabilities of a Bill Gates, but combined with Kennedy-like charisma," Roanoke County Democratic Vice Chairman Allen Trigger says. "We love him."
What really distinguishes this Warner, though, is the message he's delivering. Warner - who now heads an Alexandria-based venture capital company - says he gives as many technology talks as he does political ones. Sometimes, it's hard to tell the two apart, such as during his recent trip through Western Virginia to check in on Democratic candidates for the General Assembly and to make friends for his own bid next year.
Take his role in the recent - and for now, unsuccessful - effort to persuade Major League Baseball to grant an expansion team to Northern Virginia. Warner was one of the minority partners in a syndicate headed by another telecommunications kingpin, William Collins.
Sure, it would be fun for Northern Virginia to have a team, Warner says. But the way he talks, it's also essential to cementing the state's image in the new century.
"Northern Virginia is the second-largest technological center in the country, behind only Silicon Valley," Warner says. "We have 1,250 technology-based firms in Northern Virginia. Fifty to 60 percent of those companies didn't exist five years ago and most are still three-, five-, 10-person firms. But they are going to be the Microsofts and MCIs of the future." He says America Online, the Vienna-based company that's now the nation's biggest online-network provider, "is a classic example."
So what's the problem? "We don't have any identity that way," he says.
When the Northern Virginia group presented the region's demographics to baseball owners, he says, "they were blown away by us. They didn't have the foggiest idea. They went out and hired an independent demographic survey because they thought we were lying. They thought there was no way there was a market this significant that they weren't familiar with."
In the end, the Northern Virginians came up just short - the two new teams were awarded to Tampa Bay and Phoenix, although it was generally conceded that Northern Virginia is now first in line for the next round of expansion sometime around 2000.
Warner sees the baseball team - which would be called "the Virginia whatevers" - as an identity-builder, not just for Northern Virginia but the entire state.
He takes a quick inventory of the state's technological base - from the wireless communications industry sprouting in the Roanoke and New River valleys, to the new Motorola plant slated for suburban Richmond, to defense-related industries in Hampton Roads. To Warner, they're not separate industries, but all part of the same high-tech umbrella - or they could be, with the right sales pitch.
Virginia, he says, offers a strong foothold in all three components of the high-tech world - hardware, software and networking. Boston's Route 128 and California's Silicon Valley excelled in only one field at a time.
"Virginia ought to be the technological leader for the whole country," he says. "Somebody needs to articulate a vision for Virginia that lays that out as a goal."
Such as a Senate candidate?
Warner smiles. A Senate candidate "might have some thoughts on it, yeah," he says. "It's the great opportunity Virginia faces."
To Warner, it's partly a marketing problem, partly a matter of building the right infrastructure - the sometimes-talked about "super-airport" between Richmond and Hampton Roads to provide the state with a new international gateway, for instance, or making sure that rural Virginia is properly wired for connection to the Internet, the global computer networks.
Heady stuff. But is it really the stuff of a Senate campaign? Many Democratic activists, who have watched Warner rebuilding a statewide party organization that had fallen into disrepair, say it could be.
"He can talk about jobs and what the nation should be doing in the 21st century," says Trigger, the Roanoke County vice chairman. "I think he'll be a formidable candidate."
University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato is less certain, noting that Warner lacks a strong statewide profile. "He is perfectly respectable, but with all due respect, he's standby equipment" - in case a better-known candidate, such as former Gov. Gerald Baliles, fails to materialize.
Republican commentators, though, say Mark Warner shouldn't be taken lightly. "The key element is the money," says Ray Garland, a former Roanoke state legislator who now writes a statewide newspaper column. "You need a guy who's a heavy hitter and who can groove with the big-money boys." Warner appears to fit the bill.
Still, is Virginia ready for a candidate who talks about Microsoft and microwave bandwidths as if they were the usual campaign banter? It may not matter.
"The thing about Mark is he's genuinely interested in that type of thing and genuinely interested in bringing that kind of business to Virginia for the good of everybody," said Botetourt County activist Debbie Jordan. "I think he is idealistic. To Mark, the politics come second. For most politicians, it's the other way around."
Keywords:
POLITICS PROFILE
by CNB