Mark Warner for Virginia
September 13, 2026 · Newsletter
My decision:
In just 5 days, early voting begins in Virginia. So I’ve been traveling the Commonwealth, meeting with voters, and asking them to re-hire me.
That’s not something I ask lightly.
In case we haven’t had a chance to see each other at an event this summer, I wanted to share with you what I’ve been telling voters on the road.
I think politics is about choices, and there are a series of choices going on right now in Washington that don’t put America first. That’s wrong – and I’m in this fight to offer a better path forward for Virginia:
1) I think it is time to end this war of choice with Iran.
First off, we ought to acknowledge that Iran is a destabilizing force in the region. Its leadership has long supported terrorism, and this is a regime that has brutally repressed its own people.
But for the last 10 years, I’ve been Chair or Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I see all the intelligence. Iran in no way represented an imminent threat to the United States: This was a war of choice.
Six months in, incredible sacrifice from our service members and their families, and higher costs for all of us… And for what?
We have a regime that’s even worse. Iran still has enriched uranium. They still have missiles and drones. And the regime has realized the power it has over the global economy with its ability to close the Strait of Hormuz.
We need to bring this war to an end, and we need to go back to an America that is respected by our allies.
2) We need to bring down costs and end Donald Trump’s trade wars.
As long as we’re in this senseless trade war with our allies, we are not going to see lower costs for Virginia families.
I have voted repeatedly against Trump’s tariffs, and I’ll keep fighting until we bring down costs and end this stupid cycle of on-again-off-again tariffs that are hurting Virginia small businesses, consumers, and farmers.
3) We’ve got to expand health care coverage.
After this election, we’re going to see another 300,000 Virginians lose their health care coverage – a direct result of President Trump’s Big Ugly Bill and his cruel cuts to Medicaid.
We need to restore health care access to Virginians who are losing their coverage because of Republican policies, but we have to go further. As long as we keep bandaging this broken health care system, we’re never going to get to cost contained.
It is time to move to universal health care, so that we don’t only focus on who has coverage, but turn our focus on bringing costs down for everyone.
4) We need to keep human beings in charge of technology, not the other way around.
I was blessed to do pretty well in technology back when cell phones were a new idea in the 80s. We are now about to enter into a new age of technology transformation that will be bigger than cell phones, and even more transformative than the internet: artificial intelligence. We’re not putting this genie back in the bottle, but we’ve got to have guardrails.
I have introduced a comprehensive AI framework to tackle this issue head: To protect our communities from giant tech companies building data centers with no guardrails whatsoever, to protect our kids from the dangers these chatbots pose to their health and safety, to protect our national security, and to protect our jobs and help transition our economy.
The challenges facing our country are big. There’s no doubt about that. But Americans have never been afraid of the future, and we can’t start now.
That’s why I’m running for reelection and it’s why I’m humbly asking Virginians to re-hire me.
If you agree with my policy agenda, then I’m asking you to personally endorse my campaign.
Thank you. Let’s go win this.
Mark Warner