Sen. Mark Warner says if reelected this year, it would be his last term

Kate Seltzer, The Virginian-Pilot on Jul 22, 2026

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U.S. Sen. Mark Warner said that this would be his fourth and final term in the Senate if his reelection bid is successful in November. Warner, a Virginia Democrat, has held the seat since 2009.

“I’ve been doing this for a while, and I’m so grateful to everybody,” Warner said at a campaign stop in Staunton. “I’m here to ask you to support me for my last campaign.”

Warner, 71, said it was time to move on and to bring younger people into office.

“But I can tell you this much — I sure as hell was not going to quit while Donald Trump was sitting down the street,” he said.

Senate terms are six years, meaning if he was reelected, Warner would be 78 when he retired.

Warner was the only Democrat to qualify for the ballot. He’ll face off against the winner of the Aug. 4 Republican primary, for which early voting began last month and runs through Aug. 1. The candidates running to be the Republican nominee are Kim Farington, Bert Mizusawa and David Williams.

Virginia has had the same representation in the Senate since 2013, when Sen. Tim Kaine took office. Kaine is next up for reelection in 2030.

Warner recently announced a legislative package that would regulate the use of artificial intelligence. Those bills would, among other things, require data centers to publicly disclose information about their energy and water consumption and create safeguards designed to prevent the use of AI in generating child sexual abuse material and non-consensual intimate images.

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