On Tuesday, Feb. 5, former Virginia Governor Mark Warner visited Radford University and spoke to a crowd of about 150 people in the Bonnie Hurlburt Student Center.

Warner began his speech by acknowledging the achievements of Cliff and Donna Boyd (seen in right lower corner of photo below), two award-winning faculty members at RU. Dr. Donna Boyd was named a U.S. National Professor of the Year in 2006 and husband Dr. Cliff Boyd recently won an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

Warner, who is running as a Democrat for a seat in the U.S. Senate, then moved into his own background, primarily for the students whom Warner said “might not have totally been focused in high school on who your governor was.”

One of Warner’s themes for the talk quickly began to emerge, that we are a country that should be giving our citizens opportunities. Warner, a first-generation college student, explained to the crowd how he had failed at business and politics early in his career but now, obviously, was successful at both. I think the quintessential American value is that everyone in this country should get a fair shot,” Warner said. “That doesn’t even guarantee a success but you ought to get your fair shot.”

Another theme embedded in Warner’s speech was a call for unity and bipartisan politics. “At the end of the day, what we’ve got to do in Virginia and in this country is we’ve got to find a way to get folks from both political parties to end up working closer together,” Warner said. “As a business guy I didn’t see that good ideas came with an “R” or a “D” attached to them. You’ve got to seek out the best ideas, find common cause and get things done.”

In typical stump-speech fashion, Warner listed his achievements as governor, including education, economy, and technology. He offered anecdotes about his past and his decision to not run for president. Then Warner stated why he was running for Senate. “Our country is at a critical juncture,” he said. “And there are a host of issues that, quite honestly, in the last six or seven years we haven’t seen our country address.”

Warner then spoke about our country’s energy policy, the need to invest in infrastructure, and what Warner called a national competitiveness plan, which includes education, healthcare, and increasing our standing in a global economy. Warner spoke frankly of fiscal concerns, calling the United States “a credit card nation.” And he also spoke of U.S. standing in the world, including “re-establishing America’s moral preeminence.”

The speech, which occurred on Super Tuesday, offered no hint of a Democratic endorsement. In fact, when asked by an audience member who he thought would come out on top at the end of the day, Warner did not offer his thoughts on who might win, let alone a personal favorite.

Warner took questions from the audience for about 20 minutes before finishing his time at the podium and taking a few more minutes to shake hands before leaving the RU Campus.

— Tim W. Jackson is the Editor & Publisher of the New River Voice.