“He was frail but had a great deal of spirit and was involved until his last days,” Magill said.
Warner, a courtly figure who squired celebrities and was married to Elizabeth Taylor when he was elected to the Senate in 1978, and went on to serve five terms before retiring from the room in 2008. He attracted support from moderates of both major parties, establishing himself in the middle of American politics.
He had been a key supporter of President George W. Bush’s announcement of war in Iraq, also served for some time as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He had an independent streak that occasionally angered more conservative GOP leaders. However he had been hugely popular with Virginia voters.
Being the roughest of Taylor’s seven husbands did not hurt when he ran for the Senate. Taylor wrote afterwards that they remained friends, but she”just couldn’t endure the intense loneliness” when he became engrossed in his Senate duties.
He was succeeded in 2008 by Democrat Mark Warner — no connection — who had challenged him for the Senate in 1996 and went on to serve a term as Virginia’s governor. After years of competition, both became great friends. Mark Warner stated that he”epitomizes what it means to be a senator.”
“In Virginia, we expect a lot of our elected officials. We expect them to direct, yet remain humble. We expect them to serve, but with dignity. We expect them to fight for what they believe in, but without making it personal. John Warner has been the embodiment of all that and more. I firmly believe we can use more role models like him today,” Mark Warner said Wednesday.
Warner obtained support from moderates in both parties. The courtly senator with chiseled features and a thick shock of grey hair was so popular with Virginia voters that Democrats did not bother to challenge him in 2002 because of his re-election into his fifth semester.
“Virginians know I stand up for what I think is right, and that I take the results,” Warner said in 1996.
Warner was an early supporter of McCain’s campaign for presidentendorsing his fellow senator in February 2007.
A key supporter of US army
The former secretary of the Navy, a veteran of World War II and Korea, Warner committed almost all of his career to military things. He also lost his post since Armed Services Committee chairman in 2001, when Sen. Jim Jeffords’ departure from the GOP put Democrats in control of the Senate, but he regained it after the 2002 elections set Republicans back accountable before the 2006 elections.
Warner regularly defended the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq, but he also showed a willingness to buck the White House.
After a 2007 visit to Iraq, Warner called upon Bush to begin bringing troops home. He summoned top Pentagon officials to hearings about the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and the Iraq war.
That same year, Warner was the only senator to officially object to the federal government stepping in on the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case.
“Greater wisdom is not necessarily reposed from the branches of federal government,” he explained at the moment. He’d quietly inserted his statement to the Congressional Record hours following the measure passed the Senate on a voice vote.
Sometimes awkward relationship with Republicans
Republicans nominated Warner to the Senate in 1978 following the party’s first option, Richard Obenshain, died in a plane crash. Warner was ridiculed by some who believed he was riding the coattails of his then-wife, Taylor, whom he’d wed in late 1976.
Warner was chosen by the razor-thin perimeter of 4,721 votes from 1.2 million throw and has been easily re-elected in 1984 and 1990.
Back in 1994, Warner angered conservatives by opposing GOP nominee Oliver North’s bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Charles S. Robb. Warner announced that the Iran-Contra figure unfit for public office and endorsed independent J. Marshall Coleman, who attracted sufficient independent and moderate GOP votes to ensure Robb’s re-election.
Steamed by what they viewed as disloyalty to the celebration, GOP conservatives attempted to deny him a fourth term in 1996, backing a challenge by former Reagan administration budget manager Jim Miller.
Miller portrayed Warner as an elitist who invested too much time squiring stars, such as Barbara Walters. However, Warner readily defeated Miller in the first, and proceeded to conquer Democrat Mark Warner in the general election.
John Warner mended his strained ties with the GOP by encouraging the successful campaigns of Jim Gilmore for governor in 1997 and George Allen to get Robb’s Senate seat in 2000.
“I sure risked my political future, that’s for sure,” Warner said in 1994. “But I had rather the voters of the nation remember I stood in my principle. … That is the price of leadership.”
While the army was Warner’s top priority, he also championed legislation to toughen seat belt laws and took an increasing amount of environmental concerns.
Produced in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 18, 1927, Warner volunteered for the Navy at 17 and served as a 3rd class electronics tech.
He entered law school at the University of Virginia in the fall of 1949 but volunteered another year to its Marines, serving in Korea as a first lieutenant and communications officer with the First Marine Air Wing.
Following Korea, he returned to law school and received a diploma from U.Va. in 1953.
He was a law clerk in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, went to private practice, then served four years as a federal prosecutor.
In 1960he resumed private practice and specialized in banking, securities and corporate training. He was secretary of the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration from 1974 to 1976.
Warner acquired a estimated $7 million chance at the breakup of his first marriage, to Catherine Mellon, daughter of multimillionaire Paul Mellon.
He and Taylor divorced in 1982 and he married real estate agent Jeanne Vander Myde in 2003.
