I’m worried about Sen. Mark Warner.

The man who had campaigned as a moderate, bi-partisan businessman during his first successful run for the U.S. Senate in 2008, who, was part of the Gang of Six - three Republicans, three Democrats - who worked to craft bipartisan solutions to problems, has been exhibiting concerning behavior lately.

Every couple of days he posts increasingly insane anti-Trump car videos, with the camera held uncomfortably close to his face so that his features appear distorted and scary.

Here’s just one. Check his X feed for more.

The senator had many of us fooled in 2008 when he handily beat another former governor, Jim Gilmore. Warner campaigned as a moderate, a businessman who would reach across the aisle.

But shortly before the election of 2014, a scandal broke. Warner was accused of meddling in state politics. It was alleged that he dangled the promise of a federal judgeship to the daughter of State Sen. Phil Puckett, in an attempt to keep him from retiring and causing Democrats to lose their majority in the state house.

Warner denied the allegations saying only that he’d “brainstormed” with the family and “possibilities” were discussed.

In other words, Warner was unmasked as a sneaky partisan hack.

That chicanery almost cost Warner his senate seat. Ed Gillespie, former RNC chair, lost that race by about 17,000 votes, less than 1 percent of the vote.

So close…

The scandal also caused UVa’s Larry Sabato to issue this scathing analysis of Warner, which I quoted in a November 2014 column for The Virginian Pilot:

Last month Virginians learned that their senator had engaged in grubby political dealmaking in an attempt to keep Democratic State Sen. Phil Puckett in the General Assembly. There are reports – which Warner denies – that he may have floated a federal judgeship for Puckett’s daughter as an enticement.

What makes this doubly embarrassing for Warner is that he – a powerful U.S. senator – failed to persuade a lowly state legislator to stay put for the good of the party.

Highly partisan, yet ineffective.

In an interview with Politico, Sabato discussed the tarnishing of Warner’s image. He said Gillespie ads, which hammered at Warner’s record of voting with President Obama 97 percent of the time, bruised the senator.

“He (Warner) lost his brand in the Senate,” Sabato said. “He thought that meeting with Republican senators X,Y and Z and jawboning with them about the budget somehow kept his brand of bipartisanship alive…. He was not bipartisan. He was an Obama functionary. Obama was the puppetmaster, and he was the puppet…. This burned off his Teflon. It’s gone.”

Puppetry. Jawboning. Teflon torching. Strong stuff from the professor.

Somehow, Warner lucked out in 2020, when the GOP threw up it hands and nominated a college professor, Daniel Gade as a sacrificial lamb. Warner won with 56% of the vote.

Is the tormented 70-year-old senator preparing for yet another run in 2026? 

Looks like it. So this might be the perfect time to remind voters that in 1996, during the Warner versus Warner race, when Sen. John Warner beat the youngster 52.5 percent to 47.4 percent, Mark Warner promised that if elected he would serve just two terms.

Here, see for yourself. 

Seriously, senator, you’re in your third term. What happened?