In the race to represent the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States Senate, incumbent Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) is challenged by Bert Mizusawa (R). Warner was first elected to the Senate in 2008 and is in his third term.
Each of the fifty states have two seats in the Senate for a total of one hundred seats. There is no representation, voting or non-voting, for U.S. territories or the District of Columbia. Senators serve six-year terms, and elections are held on a staggered schedule with classes of roughly one-third of the Senate up for election every two years. This year, the thirty-three seats of the second class are in contention.
The Republican Party holds a 53-45 seat majority over the Democratic Party. There are two independent members who caucus with the Democrats. Both of Virginia’s Senate seats are currently held by Democrats.
Incumbent: Mark Warner (D)
Incumbent Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) stands as the Democratic Party nominee to represent Virginia in the U.S. Senate. He is nearing the end of his third term.
Warner holds a political science degree from George Washington University and a law degree from Harvard Law School. He is an entrepreneur and was a major investor in cellular and telecommunications businesses, where he amassed a significant fortune. He was among the earliest large investors in FleetCall, the company that later became Nextel Communications. Nextel merged with Sprint in 2005, and the combined Sprint Nextel Corporation was acquired by T-Mobile in 2020.
Warner first ran for elective office in 1996, unsuccessfully challenging Senator John Warner (R-VA) (no relation). In 2001 he was elected Governor of Virginia, serving one term (Virginia’s constitution prohibits governors from serving multiple consecutive terms). He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008 and reelected in 2014 and 2020.
As our governor Warner was pragmatic, moderate, and effective. He impressed me enough that, when he ran for Senate, he became one of a small handful of Democrats who overcame my “conservatarian” tendencies and earned the Off on a Tangent endorsement. Sadly, after settling into that office, he turned into another cookie-cutter Democrat. He completely abandoned his former pragmatism and bipartisanship. In 2014 I described this as “a political betrayal of the highest order.” In 2020 I said, “there is no endorsement I regret more in hindsight than Warner’s.”
As you might expect, this campaign is more of the same. He says, with misplaced pride, that he “helped write the Affordable Care Act” that made our healthcare system even worse and more expensive that it was before. He says he wants to protect “free and fair elections” and defend “democratic norms and institutions,” but voted against every voter-ID bill and almost every election security bill that came before him. He talks about “constitutional rights” but works to undermine self-defense rights, religious liberty, and—worst of all—the right to life, which is the first a human right and the prerequisite for all others.
Warner also supported Virginia’s illegal redistricting amendment, which was “one of the most appalling, unethical things I’ve ever seen in Virginia politics.” I have a difficult time finding strong enough adjectives to describe how wrong it was. The effort violated voters’ equal protection rights, and the ballot question was a lie. So much for those “free and fair elections” Warner claims to support; we can’t even trust the text printed on our ballots anymore.
In my House of Representatives endorsement article, speaking about another politician who supported that shameful proposal, I summed it up about as well as I can: “The amendment would have disenfranchised nearly half the state’s voters; to support it required an almost incomprehensible moral emptiness. It was an expression of hatred toward their neighbors, and a betrayal of representative democracy itself.”
Bert Mizusawa (R)
Bert Mizusawa (R) stands as the Republican Party nominee to represent Virginia in the U.S. Senate.
Mizusawa holds a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Military Academy (West Point), a master’s of public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and a law degree from Harvard Law School. He was the first in his class at West Point. He had a distinguished career in the U.S. Army where he rose to the rank of major general. In 1983, while Mizusawa was commanding the Joint Security Force in the Korean demilitarized zone, he led a firefight with North Korean forces and, under enemy fire, personally led a Soviet defector to safety. He was awarded the Silver Star for “exceptional valor and gallantry in action.”
As a civilian, Mizusawa has been a lawyer in private practice and a corporate executive, a staff member on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, a foreign policy advisor to President Donald Trump (R), and a senior advisor at the Central Intelligence Agency. He unsuccessfully sought the 2010 Republican nomination for Virginia’s 2nd District in the U.S. House; if elected, this would be his first time holding elective office.
Mizusawa’s campaign platform is focused on fiscal responsibility, affordability, supporting the military, stopping corruption, lowering healthcare costs, and energy production. Those sound good to me, but I can’t offer much more detail because his campaign website has only a short, single-paragraph summary under each of those headings. Saying, “I will focus on balancing the budget,” and, “I will lower healthcare costs for Virginians,” isn’t a plan. What policies do you propose? How do you plan to push anything through the Senate’s do-nothing inertia?
I’m also left to guess, based on nothing more than his party affiliation, where he might stand on other important issues. Does he plan to support and defend the fundamental human rights to life, liberty, and property? Does he properly recognize the primacy of the right to life? Does he support self-defense rights? Is he willing to defend property rights even when a gang of obnoxious NIMBYs is whining about some big, bad data center that’s really none of their business?
I assume that Mizusawa acknowledges and would defend the right to life; the freedoms of speech, press, and religion; and self-defense rights. He’s probably as wishy-washy on property rights as most politicians—Republican and Democrat alike. He’s probably in favor of reasonable, pro-business economic policies. Beyond that . . . who knows?
Conclusion
Senator Mark Warner’s (D-VA) public support for the illegal effort to disenfranchise almost half of Virginia is a permanent disqualifier. That proposed amendment was so deeply and obviously wrong that anyone who endorsed it—or voted for it—proved themselves unworthy of trust and respect. We cannot just “forgive and forget” the hateful thing they tried to do to us, their own neighbors . . . at least not until they demonstrate some genuine sorrow, regret, and penitence. In the meantime, Warner and others like him should be run out of office in shame and disgrace.
Bert Mizusawa (R) couldn’t be worse than Warner if he tried . . . but it would be nice if he gave us other reasons to vote for him. His vague campaign pillars are fine, I guess, but there are no details, and no plan for how he would actually accomplish anything in the Senate. But, unlike Warner, he seems to have integrity. I don’t think he would sell-out the people of Virginia in return for personal clout in the national party, and I don’t think he would support disenfranchising his political opponents.
Vote Bert Mizusawa for U.S. Senate from Virginia.