At the top of the ticket in Virginia this year is the race for the United States Senate, where Virginia's senior senator is seeking a fourth term in office.
Mark Warner often talks about his past as a businessman, but he got the politics bug early taking a gig fundraising for the Democratic National Committee right out of law school. He went on to be campaign manager for Doug Wilder's run for governor before cobbling together investors to create Nextel, which made him a millionaire. In 1996, Mark Warner ran against incumbent Republican Senator John Warner.
"And I hope we're starting to see the difference between the Warners now. You know, people say they're going to get confused between the two," he said. "I think come November, people will know the difference."
Mark Warner lost that election, but then he pivoted to running for governor of Virginia.
"My fellow Virginians, the hour has arrived," Warner said.
After his term as governor was over, Warner was elected to the Senate in 2008 and made his way to the Intelligence Committee, where he worked with Republicans to investigate the involvement of Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign.
"I was a technology guy before I was in politics. And the very technology that has made our lives simpler can also be misused in ways to put false information for folks who potentially only get their news off a Twitter feed or a Facebook news feed," he said. "And that raises serious questions even beyond this investigation."
Now, he's seeking a fourth term in office, which he says will be his last. He says he wants universal healthcare, affordable housing and he wants to make tech companies pay for solutions to AI job displacement.
"We need a vision to chart a new path, and effective leadership to get it done," Warner says. "That's why I'm running for reelection to the United States Senate."
His opponent in the race is retired U.S. Army Major General Bert Mizusawa.
"I don't really want to run for Senate, I want to be in the Senate," Mizusawa says. "I just can't figure out another way to get there without running for it first."
Mizusawa previously ran for the 2nd Congressional District back in 2010, and now he says if elected to the Senate he wants to focus on reducing spending and tackling the debt. He also says he wants to return the country to a commodity based monetary system, something like the gold standard.
"It might sound crazy because gold sounds kind of anachronistic, but gold has been the standard for monetary systems going back thousands of years," Mizusawa says.
He says this will bring discipline to the monetary system.
"It could be something better than gold, and I actually believe that Bitcoin is better than gold."
Mizusawa also says President Donald Trump could have a third term in office.
"There's a big difference between the words 'could' and 'should.' I never said he 'should;” I just said as a legal matter he 'could,'" he says.
Plenty of constitutional scholars would disagree with the idea of a third term, although Mizusawa says the text of the Constitution is clear.
"And that constitutional provision does not say someone cannot serve a third term; it says that someone may not be elected to a third term. So, I was making a legal point.”
Voters will determine who they want to represent Virginia in the Senate as early voting continues this week. Voting ends at 7 pm on Tuesday, November 3rd.
