Warner aims for center in Hill City visit

Democrat Mark Warner solidified the centrist theme of his U.S. Senate campaign during a Lynchburg stop Tuesday by gathering an endorsement from the city’s former delegate to the General Assembly.

“I am a Republican and I am supporting Mark Warner for the United States Senate,” said Lynchburg native son Preston Bryant, to cheers from a lunchtime crowd of about 250 on Church Street at the foot of Monument Terrace.

Bryant, who represented Lynchburg for 10 years in the House of Delegates, now works in Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s administration as secretary of natural resources.

It was the second Republican endorsement in Warner’s four-day, 11-city kickoff tour in his bid for the seat being vacated by Sen. John Warner, R-Va. On Monday, Republican Heywood Fralin introduced Mark Warner to a crowd in Roanoke and praised his bipartisanship.

Fralin is the father of Del. William Fralin, R-Roanoke.

Warner’s tour began Sunday in Abingdon and concludes today on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

Del. Shannon Valentine, who now fills the House seat Bryant previously held, told the crowd she has “great hope for our country because of a man named Mark Warner.” Valentine said Warner’s election as governor in 2001 opened the door for new leaders in Virginia.

Warner returned the compliment when he took the microphone, referring to Valentine as “a comer, one of the rising stars in the commonwealth of Virginia.”

Former state Sen. Elliot Schewel, of Lynchburg, began the partisan speechmaking by blasting former Gov. Jim Gilmore, Warner’s predecessor as governor and possibly his Republican opponent in the Senate race next fall.

“Jim Gilmore was an absolute disaster as governor,” said Schewel, a Democrat. “He left office with one of the lowest approval ratings of any governor in recent history, and he left Mark Warner with the worst budget deficit in the history of our state.” A Gilmore spokesman denied there was a deficit and said Warner was being divisive.

The budget crisis turned around during Warner’s four years in office, partly because Bryant and a few other Republicans supported a Warner-proposed tax increase.

“Mark Warner ended his term with a surplus,” and “one of the highest approval ratings of any of our governors in recent years,” Schewel said.

Gilmore and Del. Robert Marshall of Prince William are competing for the GOP nomination to oppose Warner in November.

Gilmore campaign spokesman Dick Leggitt fired back.

“Senator Schewel, like Mark Warner, doesn’t let the facts get in the way of a political attack on a Republican,” Leggitt said.

“That’s the bipartisan government Mark Warner talks about. The fact is, audited Virginia financial statements show that Jim Gilmore submitted a balanced budget, as required by law, every year, including his final year.

“The budget deficit Mark Warner and his cronies refer to was created by Mark Warner to justify his $1.4 billion tax increase — and his broken word to the people of Virginia. Biennial revenues during that time were actually $3.8 million more than Warner projected,” Leggitt said.

“Jim Gilmore had a year-end balance of more than $1 billion every year he was governor. He returned more than $1.5 billion to the taxpayers and put $1 billion in the state’s rainy-day fund — more than any governor in history — money that Mark Warner promptly spent.

“Mark Warner, while pretending the state was suffering financially, actually increased spending by more than $23 billion during his four years as governor,” Leggitt said.

Warner, keeping to his stump speech during the tour, never mentioned Gilmore by name. But he said, “When I got elected, we found the budget shortfall was about four times bigger than what my predecessor said. It wasn’t just me that was surprised. You ask any Republican member of the legislature, any Democratic member. We truly had a $6 billion deficit.”

Warner said his administration addressed the problem first by cutting spending, and reminded the crowd he had closed DMV offices one day per week.

Warner also acknowledged Lynchburg’s military veterans who presented the colors at the start of the campaign appearance. They were part of the veterans group that shows the colors every Friday on Monument Terrace to remind motorists that another week has passed in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their tote board showed this is week 335.

Nathan Chapman, an Army Reservist from Lynchburg who was wounded in Iraq in 2005, spoke to the crowd. “I’m not here to support any specific candidate or party,” he said. “I’m here to express my concern for all veterans and our benefits,” Chapman said. “It is imperative that the sacrifices by members of the United States armed forces never be forgotten.”

Warner said that as governor he improved Virginia’s services to veterans by consolidating programs and having someone in the governor’s office to take care of veteran’s issues.

“Our troops have performed magnificently under some of the most strenuous conditions in modern history,” Warner said, and “our country is doing a disservice by not providing world-class health care to our wounded veterans.”

Warner also gave a nod to Lynchburg’s nuclear industry as he ticked off a list of energy concerns, and said the U.S. should end its dependence on foreign oil.

“Countries like France and Japan get 80 percent of their electric power from nuclear energy,” Warner said after his speech. “If we are going to get ourselves off of oil, and also grapple with the issue of climate change, nuclear fuel has got to be one of the options,” Warner said.

Asked about a controversial proposal to mine a uranium deposit near Chatham, Warner said, “I don’t know enough about the science to weigh in on that.

“You’ve got to weigh in the local concerns, but I hope the science would dictate, and I have to get my science straight before I fix on that,” he said.