Former Va. Governor Introduces Himself in Key State for Presidential Aspirants
By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 12, 2006
MANCHESTER, N.H., Feb. 11 -- A lot has changed for Mark R. Warner since he left behind the Virginia governorship and his 80 percent approval ratings to begin mulling a presidential campaign.
But perhaps nothing more than this: At just 3 percent in a recent poll asking Democrats nationwide to rate their presidential preference, Warner has become an unknown overnight.
Which is why, on a frigid Friday in February, Warner found himself in a Radisson Hotel, eating stuffed chicken and introducing himself to a ballroom full of strangers 500 miles from home.
"Good evening, everyone," Warner told the Democratic audience after it had watched a video of his achievements on a jumbo screen. "I'm Mark Warner, and despite what you saw in that video . . . I'm unemployed."
It got a laugh, as it has since he began using the line last month, after he left office. But Warner's purpose in New Hampshire is serious. In less than two years, this tiny state's voters will pick from a handful of Democrats the person they hope will retake 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
If Warner decides to be in that pack -- and he swears that he hasn't made up his mind -- voters in New Hampshire and in Iowa, where the first presidential caucus is held, must come to know the one-term governor almost as intimately as Virginians have during the past four years.
That won't be easy.
He's likely to be competing with such superstars as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who was preferred by more than 10 times as many Democratic voters in a CNN poll, and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who received more than 59 million votes in the 2004 presidential election.
The people in New Hampshire are not easy to impress. There's a seen-it-all-before attitude in the New England state, where many residents have lost track of the presidential aspirants who have sat in their kitchens for coffee.
"He's got to get to know people, right?" said Joseph Duffin, a New Hampshire computer consultant who went to high school with Warner in Connecticut. "I don't think too many people know who Mark Warner is up in New Hampshire yet."
With a winter storm nearing, Warner's trip to Manchester was an in-and-out event. But he did find time to stop at Stonyfield Farm, a Londonderry yogurt factory that has become one of the many can't-miss stops on the New Hampshire presidential circuit.
Like those who came before him, Warner tasted the latest new flavor (French vanilla), greeted the factory workers (about a dozen) and parried with the national press corps, including a CNN crew led by the network's senior national correspondent, John King.
"You're probably more used to this than I am," Warner told the yogurt employees.
Then it was on to the Governor's Suite at the Radisson, where aides had scheduled one-on-one meetings between Warner and the movers and shakers in the state's Democratic Party.
One was George Bruno, a former state party chairman and an early supporter of candidate Bill Clinton. After the closed-door introduction to Warner, Bruno said he was impressed.
"He's making friends in New Hampshire, and that's where it all starts," Bruno said. "At this moment, he's a clean slate."
But Bruno had a warning for Warner. "He can hope that his campaign doesn't take off too quickly at the beginning," Bruno said. "He needs time to test his sea legs, his campaign legs, we'll say. He needs time to test out his themes. He needs time to size up audiences, without all the attention."
Bottom line: "Fade away for a while," Bruno said.
Warner shows little sign of taking that advice. He strode into the banquet hall like a rock star, surrounded by cameras and reporters. Since helping elect Timothy M. Kaine (D) as his successor in Virginia, Warner has been the Democratic "it" candidate, and his staff has been doing nothing to extinguish that notion.
In the 25-minute speech to the annual 100 Club fundraising dinner, Warner made a point of sharpening his rhetoric.
"And then there's Jack Abramoff," he said of the disgraced Washington lobbyist, "who all of a sudden a whole lot of Republican congressmen can't remember if they ever met."
Of President Bush and the Republicans, he added: "They've pushed competence to the side and made partisan loyalty the standard."
And in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he said, the Bush administration has failed to hold anyone accountable.
"From an administration and a party that preaches the ethic of personal responsibility," he said to applause, "the consistent lack of it in our government is unacceptable."
After the speech, several New Hampshire Democrats praised Warner's performance, but none was ready to declare allegiance.
"It was really light on foreign policy," worried Chris Dwyer, who before the speech had declared electability one of the things she would be looking for. Still, she said, he was "direct and confident."
Asked later why someone like him -- with no foreign policy experience -- should carry the party's message in that area, Warner struggled to find a simple answer.
"Well, one of the things I hope, I think I was clear about in the speech was that keeping America safe and secure in the post-9/11 world is critical," he said.
He will almost certainly have more opportunities to refine that answer in New Hampshire.
The state's governor, John Lynch, who operates in a bipartisan, Warner-like fashion, joked with his fellow Democrats at the dinner that he expects to see much more of Warner.
"I am very impressed," Lynch told the Democrats. "He came all the way to New Hampshire just for the tax-free shopping. He saved so much money, he told me he is coming back to shop again and again and again."
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