John Warner

For other people named John Warner, see John Warner (disambiguation).

John Warner
Senior Senator, Virginia
In office 1979–Present
Preceded by	William L. Scott
Succeeded by	Incumbent (2009)
Personal details
Nationality	american
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	(1) Catherine Mellon (div.) (2) Elizabeth Taylor (div.) (3) Jeanne Vander Myde

John William Warner (born February 18, 1927) is an American statesman and politician, who served as Secretary of the Navy from 1972-1974 and has served as a Republican senator from Virginia since 1979. He is one of the few World War II veterans left in the United States Senate.

Early life and education

Warner was born and grew up in Washington, D.C. and attended the elite St. Albans School there. His parents were John W. and Martha Budd Warner. He enlisted in the United States Navy during World War II in January 1945, shortly before his 18th birthday. He served until the following year, leaving as a Petty Officer 3rd Class. He went to college at Washington and Lee University,where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi, graduating in 1949, then entered the University of Virginia Law School.

He joined the United States Marine Corps in October 1950, after the outbreak of the Korean War, and served in Korea as a ground officer with the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing. He continued in the Marine Corps Reserves after the war, eventually reaching the rank of captain. He then resumed his studies, receiving his law degree in 1953. That year, he became a law clerk to Chief Judge E. Barrett Prettyman of the United States Court of Appeals. In 1956, he became an assistant US attorney; in 1960 he entered private law practice.

Marriages

Warner's first marriage was to banking heiress Catherine Mellon, the granddaughter of billionaire Andrew Mellon; they divorced in 1973. He married actress Elizabeth Taylor on December 4, 1976; they divorced November 7, 1982. He married real estate agent Jeanne Vander Myde on December 15, 2003.

Politics

File:John Warner.jpg

Earlier portrait of Warner

In February 1969, Warner was appointed Undersecretary of the Navy under the Nixon administration. On May 4, 1972, he succeeded John H. Chafee as Secretary of the Navy. He participated in the Law of the Sea talks, and negotiated the Incidents at Sea Executive Agreement with the Soviet Union.

Warner entered politics in the 1978 Virginia election for U.S. Senate. Known primarily as Elizabeth Taylor's husband, he finished second in the Republican primary to an up-and-coming younger politician named Richard D. Obenshain. When Obenshain died in a plane crash two months later, Warner was chosen to replace him and narrowly won the general election over Democrat Andrew P. Miller, the state's former Attorney General. He has been in the Senate ever since and is now (as of 2006) in his fifth term. He is up for re-election again in 2008. His committee memberships have included the Environment and Public Works Committee, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Most importantly, as the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he has protected and enlarged the flow of billions of dollars into the Virginia economy each year via the state's naval installations and shipbuilding firms.

Warner is among the minority of Republicans to support gun control laws. He voted for the Brady Bill and, in 1999, was one of only five Republicans to vote to close the "gun show loophole." In 2004 Warner was one of three Republicans to sponsor an amendment by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that sought to provide for a 10-year extension of the Assault Weapons Ban.

File:BUSHWARNEROVAL.jpg

President George W. Bush signs into law H.R. 5122, the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 in the Oval Office at the White House. Joining him are, from left: Vice President Dick Cheney, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Sen. John Warner of Virginia, and General Peter Pace, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He is pro-life, although he has voted in favor of expanding stem-cell research. On June 15, 2004, Warner was among the minority of his party to vote to expand hate crime laws to include sexual orientation as a protected category. He however supports a Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage.

In 1993, Warner refused to support the state GOP's nominee for lieutenant governor, Mike Farris. Farris was the only statewide GOP candidate to lose that year, but lost by a wide enough margin to make it questionable as to whether Warner's support would have made a difference. In 1994, Warner campaigned for a former state Republican Attorney General turned Independent candidate Marshall Coleman against fellow Republican Oliver North in North's unsuccessful campaign to unseat Virginia's Democratic Sen. Chuck Robb. North's loss to Robb was very close, with Coleman finishing in single digits and looking like a spoiler. This time, Warner's actions were seen as the direct cause of a fellow Republican's loss.

Because of his centrist stances on many issues and because of his 1993 and 1994 snubbing of fellow Republicans, Warner faced opposition from angry members of his own party when he decided to run for re-election to a fourth term in the Senate in 1996. Many of Virginia's staunch Republican voters began a "Dump Warner" campaign to try to deny him re-nomination. However, Virginia's GOP party rules allow the incumbent to select the nominating process. Knowing he would probably lose the nomination at a convention or caucus, where only party regulars would be voting, he selected a primary. In Virginia, primaries are open to all registered voters, so Warner encouraged Democrats and independents to vote in that primary. His strategy worked and he handily defeated Republican rival James C. Miller III for the nomination.

In the general election that year, Warner was expected to win in a cakewalk over relatively unknown (at that time) Democrat Mark Warner (no relation), who had never held elective office. However, the election turned out to be much closer than many pundits had expected. Mark Warner was able to tighten the race mainly because he took full advantage of the discontent with John Warner among conservative Republican voters (even garnering protest votes from some of them). Still, the close election provided Mark Warner enough momentum and impetus to successfully run for governor of Virginia five years later.

As was the case in 1990, Warner faced no Democratic opposition in 2002, winning re-election to a fifth term in the Senate by a landslide over an independent candidate.

On May 23, 2005, Warner was one of 14 centrist senators (Gang of 14) to forge a compromise on the Democrats' proposed use of the judicial filibuster, thus blocking the Republican leadership's attempt to implement the so-called "nuclear option". Under the agreement, the Democrats would retain the power to filibuster a Bush judicial nominee only in an "extraordinary circumstance", and three Bush appellate court nominees (Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen and William Pryor) would receive a vote by the full Senate.

Repeatedly, the last time on September 17 2006, Warner has said US military and intelligence personnel in future wars will suffer for abuses committed in 2006 by the US in the name of fighting terrorism. He fears that the administration’s civilian lawyers and a president who never saw combat are putting US service personnel at risk of torture, summary executions and other atrocities by chipping away at Geneva Conventions’ standards that have protected them since 1949. Following the Supreme Court ruling on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which was averse to the Bush Administration, Warner (with Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain) negotiated with the White House the language of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, suspending habeas corpus provisions for anyone deemed by the Executive Branch an "unlawful combatant" and barring them from challenging their detentions in court. Warner's vote gave a retroactive, nine-year immunity to U.S. officials who authorized, ordered, or committed acts of torture and abuse, permitting the use of statements obtained through torture to be used in military tribunals so long as the abuse took place by December 30, 2005. Warner's "compromise" (approved by a Republican majority) authorized the President to establish permissible interrogation techniques and to "interpret the meaning and application" of international Geneva Convention standards, so long as the coercion falls short of "serious" bodily or psychological injury. Warner maintains that the new law holds true to "core principles" that the US provide fair trials and not be seen as undermining Geneva Conventions. The bill was signed into law on October 17, 2006, in Warner's presence.[1][2][3]

External links

• Official Site
• John Warner on the Issues

Preceded by Richard Burton (twice)

Husbands of Elizabeth Taylor

Succeeded by Larry Fortensky