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During Debate, Senate Candidates Own Up to Mistakes

Candidates for the United States Senate are not perfect.

In fact, some of them even admit when they’ve been wrong.

Mistakes? They’ve made a few. During a televised debate over the weekend, candidates for the United States Senate owned up to times when they were wrong.

Senator Mark Warner now says that he took the wrong position by being one of the few Democrats who failed to demand the Washington football team ditch its racist former name. “The issue of changing the name of the Redskins, I probably should have weighed in earlier. But you learn and you grow, and I think you look at people’s history and record,” Warner said Saturday.

His Republican opponent, Daniel Gade, says he was wrong to say that wearing a mask during the pandemic was what government overreach and tyranny and feels like.   “In May of 2020, what you saw there was me making a sort of philosophical point that a government that is powerful enough to make you do little things is also powerful enough to take your liberty in other ways. Maybe I mangled the point," Gade admitted. "I’m not a career politician.”

During the debate, which was conducted on the campus of Norfolk State University Saturday night, the candidates agreed that Black lives matter and that police should not be defunded.

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.

Michael Pope is an author and journalist who lives in Old Town Alexandria.
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