Early life and education
Warner was born inEarly career
Warner founded two ultimately unsuccessful businesses before becoming a general contractor for cellular businesses and investors. As founder and managing director of Columbia Capital, a venture capital firm, he helped found or was an early investor in a number of technology companies, including Nextel. He co-founded Capital Cellular Corporation in 1989, using his knowledge of federal telecommunications law to trade pieces of cellular spectrum, and built up an estimated net worth of more than $215 million. , he is the second wealthiest U.S. senator.State activism
Warner involved himself in public efforts related to health care, transportation, telecommunications, information technology and education. He managed Douglas Wilder's successful 1989 gubernatorial campaign and served as chairman of the state Democratic Party from 1993 to 1995. Warner also served, in the early 1990s, on the Virginia Commonwealth Transportation Board and sat in on monthly committee meetings of the Rail and Public Transportation Division (headed by Robert G. Corder).1996 U.S. Senate election
He unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996 against incumbent Republican John Warner (no relation) in a "Warner versus Warner" election. Mark Warner performed strongly in the state's rural areas, making the contest much closer than many pundits expected.Biodata Document Number: K1650003526Governor of Virginia
Elections
2001
Tenure
After he was elected in 2002, Warner drew upon a $900 million "rainy day fund" left by his predecessor, Jim Gilmore. Warner campaigned in favor of two regional sales tax increases, especially in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, to fund transportation. Virginians rejected both regional referendums to raise theU.S. Senate
Elections
2008
2014
In 2014, Warner faced Ed Gillespie, who had previously served as Counselor to the President under2020
In 2020, Warner defeated Republican nominee Daniel Gade, a college professor and U.S. Army veteran, with 56% of the vote to Gade's 44%.Tenure
Upon arriving in the U.S. Senate in 2009, Warner was appointed to the Senate's Banking, Budget, and Commerce committees. Warner was later named to the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2011. In 2009, Warner voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus bill. As a member of the Budget Committee, he submitted an amendment designed to help the government track how the stimulus dollars were being spent. In 2010, Warner, Senator Lamar Alexander, and Representatives Tom Petri and David Price requested that the American Academy of Arts and Sciences form The Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. When offered the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in preparation for the 2012 election cycle, Warner declined because he wanted to keep a distance from the partisanship of the role. In the fall of 2012, supporters approached Warner about possibly leaving the Senate to seek a second term as Virginia's governor. After considering the prospect, Warner announced shortly after the November 2012 elections that he had chosen to remain in the Senate because he was "all in" on finding a bipartisan solution to the country's fiscal challenges. Warner became the senior senator on January 3, 2013, when Jim Webb left the Senate and was replaced by Tim Kaine, who was lieutenant governor while Warner was governor. In October 2014, Warner was implicated in a federal investigation of the 2014 resignation of Virginia State Senator Phillip Puckett. He was alleged to have "discussed the possibility of several jobs, including a federal judgeship, for the senator's daughter in an effort to dissuade him from quitting the evenly divided state Senate." A Warner spokesman acknowledged that the conversation occurred, but said Warner made no "explicit" job offer and that he and Puckett were simply "brainstorming". In January 2015, the Republican Party of Virginia filed a formal complaint against Warner with the United States Senate Select Committee on Ethics, alleging that Warner's interactions with Puckett violated the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. Warner has been identified as a radical centrist, working to foster compromise in the Senate. He was ranked the 10th most bipartisan member of the U.S. Senate during the 114th United States Congress in the Bipartisan Index, created by The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy to assess congressional bipartisanship. According to the same methodology, Warner was the second most bipartisan Democrat in the 115th United States Congress.Campaign contributions
From 2008 to 2014, Warner's top ten campaign contributors included JP Morgan Chase, the Blackstone Group, and Columbia Capital. BlackRock had never contributed until Warner bought shares in the BlackRock Equity Dividend Fund in 2011.119th United States Congress Committee assignments
Source: * Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs ** Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection ** Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment (Ranking Member) ** Subcommittee on Digital Assets * Committee on the Budget * Committee on Finance * Committee on Rules and Administration * Select Committee on Intelligence (Vice Chairman) * Joint Committee on the LibraryPolitical positions
Abortion
Warner is pro-choice and supports '' Roe v. Wade''.Health care
On a video in his senate office, Warner promised Virginians, "I would not vote for a health-care plan that doesn't let you keep health insurance you like." He voted for the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly called Obamacare, helping the Senate reach the required sixty votes to prevent it from going to a filibuster. He and 11 Senate freshmen discussed adding an amendment package aimed at addressing health care costs by expanding health IT and wellness prevention. In January 2019, Warner was one of six Democratic senators to introduce the American Miners Act of 2019, a bill that would amend theFinance
From the start of his Senate term, Warner attempted to replicate in Washington, D.C. the bipartisan partnerships that he used effectively during his tenure as Virginia governor. In 2010, Warner worked with a Republican colleague on the Banking Committee, Bob Corker, to write a key portion of the Dodd-Frank Act that seeks to end taxpayer bailouts of failing Wall Street financial firms by requiring "advance funeral plans" for large financial firms. In 2013, the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress gave Warner and Corker its Publius Award for their bipartisan work on financial reform legislation. In 2018, Warner became one of the few Democrats in the Senate supporting a bill that would relax "key banking regulations". As part of at least 11 other Democrats, Warner argued that the bill would "right-size post-crisis rules imposed on small and regional lenders and help make it easier for them to provide credit". Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren have stated their opposition to the legislation.Campaign finance
In June 2019, Warner and Amy Klobuchar introduced the Preventing Adversaries Internationally from Disbursing Advertising Dollars (PAID AD) Act, a bill that would modify U.S. federal campaign finance laws to outlaw the purchasing of ads that name a political candidate and appear on platforms by foreign nationals in the midst of an election year.Foreign affairs and national security
Saudi Arabia and Yemen
Warner was the original Democratic sponsor of the Startup Act legislation and has partnered with the bill's original author, Jerry Moran, to introduce three iterations of the bill: Startup Act in 2011, Startup Act 2.0 in 2012 and Startup Act 3.0 in early 2013. Warner has called the legislation the "logical next step" after enactment of the JOBS Act. In 2015, Warner criticized the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, saying: "I'm concerned in particular with some of the indiscriminate bombing in Yemen ... ulf statesneed to step up and they need to step up with more focus than the kind of indiscriminate bombing." In June 2017, Warner voted to support Trump's $350 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.Israel and Palestine
In September 2016, in advance of UN Security Council resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, Warner signed an AIPAC-sponsored letter urging President Obama to veto "one-sided" resolutions against Israel. In December 2017, Warner criticized Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, saying that it "comes at the wrong time and unnecessarily inflames the region."Sanctions on Iran, Russia, and North Korea
In July 2017, Warner voted for the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which grouped together sanctions againstCentral America
In April 2019, Warner was one of 34 senators to sign a letter to Trump encouraging him "to listen to members of your own Administration and reverse a decision that will damage our national security and aggravate conditions inside Central America", asserting that Trump had "consistently expressed a flawed understanding of U.S. foreign assistance" since becoming president and that he was "personally undermining efforts to promote U.S. national security and economic prosperity" by preventing the use of Fiscal Year 2018 national security funding. The senators argued that foreign assistance to Central American countries created less migration to the U.S., citing the funding's helping to improve conditions in those countries.Intelligence and counter-intelligence
In May 2018, Warner voted for Gina Haspel to be the next CIA director. In 2016, American foreign policy scholar Stefan Halper served as an FBI operative and contacted members of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. In May 2018, Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned Republican lawmakers that it would be "potentially illegal" to reveal Halper's identity. Warner welcomed the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who exposed American war crimes in Iraq andTelecommunications and infrastructure security
In December 2018, Warner called Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei a threat to U.S. national security. In February 2019, Warner was one of 11 senators to sign a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen urging them "to work with all federal, state and local regulators, as well as the hundreds of independent power producers and electricity distributors nation-wide to ensure our systems are protected" and affirming that they were "ready and willing to provide any assistance you need to secure our critical electricity infrastructure." In July 2019, Warner was a cosponsor of the Defending America's 5G Future Act, a bill that would prevent Huawei from being removed from the Commerce Department's "entity list" without an act of Congress and authorize Congress to block administration waivers for U.S. companies to do business with Huawei. The bill would also codify Trump's executive order from the previous May that empowered his administration to block foreign tech companies deemed a national security threat from conducting business in the U.S. In March 2023, Warner and John Thune led a bipartisan group of 12 senators to introduce the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act, legislation to comprehensively address the ongoing threat posed by technology from foreign adversaries by better empowering the Department of Commerce to review, prevent, and mitigate information communications and technology transactions that pose undue risk to our national security by giving the federal government more control over them. A provision in the legislation could also impose a prison sentence of up to 20 years and a $1 million fine for accessing "banned apps" with a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Warner's dedication to the telecommunications industry was recognized in 2013 as he was inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame. In January 2025, Warner co-sponsored the Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA), which was introduced by Senators Brian Schatz, Chris Murphy, Ted Cruz, and Katie Britt. Senators Ted Budd, Peter Welch, John Curtis, Angus King, and John Fetterman also co-sponsored the Act, which would set a minimum age of 13 to use social media platforms and prevent social media companies from feeding "algorithmically targeted" content to users under 17.Defense
In 2011, Warner voted for the four-year extension of the USA PATRIOT Act. Also in 2011, he engaged Northern Virginia's high-tech community in a ''pro bono'' effort to correct burial mistakes and other U.S. Army management deficiencies at Arlington National Cemetery. In 2012, he successfully pushed the Navy to improve the substandard military housing in Hampton Roads. Also in 2012, Warner pushed the Office of Personnel Management to address chronic backlogs in processing retirement benefits for federal workers, many of whom live in Washington's northern Virginia suburbs. He succeeded in pushing the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand access to PTSD treatment for female military veterans returning from service inEconomy
Between 2010 and 2013, Warner invested considerable time and effort in leading the Senate's Gang of Six, along with Saxby Chambliss. Chambliss and Warner sought to craft a bipartisan plan along the lines of the Simpson-Bowles Commission to address U.S. deficits and debt. Although the Gang of Six ultimately failed to produce a legislative "grand bargain", they did agree on the broad outlines of a plan that included spending cuts, tax reforms that produced more revenue, and reforms to entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security—entitlement reforms that are opposed by most Democrats. Although President Obama showed interest in the plan, leaders in Congress from both parties kept a deal from being made. In 2011, the bipartisan Concord Coalition awarded Warner and Chambliss its Economic Patriots Award for their work with the Gang of Six.Gun laws
On April 17, 2013, Warner voted to expand background checks for gun purchases as part of the Manchin-Toomey Amendment. He also voted against the 2013 Assault Weapons Ban, but changed his position in a 2018 op-ed and has co-sponsored similar efforts since then. In 2017, Warner called himself a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights and vowed to advocate for responsible gun ownership for hunting, recreation, and self-defense. In January 2019, Warner was one of 40 senators to introduce the Background Check Expansion Act, a bill that would require background checks for either the sale or transfer of all firearms including all unlicensed sellers. Exceptions to the bill's background check requirement included transfers between members of law enforcement, loans for hunting or sporting events on a temporary basis, gifts to members of one's immediate family, transfers as part of an inheritance, and giving a firearm to another person temporarily for immediate self-defense.Immigration
In 2025, Warner was one of 12 Senate Democrats who joined all Republicans to vote for the Laken Riley Act.LGBT issues
Warner supports same-sex marriage, announcing his support in a statement on his Facebook page in March 2013. His announcement came shortly after Senator Claire McCaskill announced her support for it. In July 2015, Warner and Tim Kaine cosponsored the Equality Act along with 38 other senators and 158 members of the House of Representatives, with Kaine saying, "it's critical that we prohibit discrimination in housing, education and the workplace."Minimum wage
In April 2014, the Senate debated the Minimum Wage Fairness Act (S. 1737; 113th Congress). The bill would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) to increase the federal minimum wage for employees to $10.10 per hour over two years. The bill was strongly supported by President Obama and many Democratic senators, but strongly opposed by congressional Republicans. Warner expressed a willingness to negotiate with Republicans about some of the provisions of the bill, such as the timeline for the phase-in. He said that any increase needs to be done "in a responsible way."Transparency
On the Senate Budget Committee, Warner was appointed chair of a bipartisan task force on government performance in 2009. He was a lead sponsor of the 2010 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), which imposed specific program performance goals across all federal agencies and set up a more transparent agency performance review process. On May 21, 2013, Warner introduced the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA). "The legislation requires standardized reporting of federal spending to be posted to a single website, allowing citizens to track spending in their communities and agencies to more easily identify improper payments, waste and fraud." On November 6, 2013, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee unanimously passed DATA. On January 27, 2014, the White House Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) marked-up version of the bill was leaked. This version "move away from standards and toward open data structures to publish information" and "requir sOMB in consultation with Treasury to review and, if necessary, revise standards to ensure accuracy and consistency through methods such as establishing linkages between data in agency financial systems". Warner responded: "The Obama administration talks a lot about transparency, but these comments reflect a clear attempt to gut the DATA Act. DATA reflects years of bipartisan, bicameral work, and to propose substantial, unproductive changes this late in the game is unacceptable. We look forward to passing the DATA Act, which had near universal support in its House passage and passed unanimously out of its Senate committee. I will not back down from a bill that holds the government accountable and provides taxpayers the transparency they deserve." On April 10, 2014, the Senate voted by unanimous consent to pass the bill, which was then passed by the House in a voice vote on April 28, 2014.Electoral history
Personal life
Warner is married to Lisa Collis. While on their honeymoon in 1989 inHonorary degrees
Mark Warner has been awarded several honorary degrees, these include:References
Further reading
;Archival recordsExternal links