Obama taps former Va. governor Warner for convention keynote address

WASHINGTON — Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a rising star in the Democratic Party, was tapped by the Obama campaign on Wednesday to deliver the keynote address to the 2008 Democratic national convention, an honor that often propels the speaker to the forefront of future presidential candidates.

Warner, currently the leading candidate for the U.S. Senate from Virginia, will speak on Aug. 26, the second night of the four-day convention, the same night that New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama's chief opponent for the party's presidential nomination this year, will address the gathering of Democrats.

"Like Barack Obama, Mark Warner is not afraid to challenge the status quo to bring people together and get things moving," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in a statement. "It's that kind of spirit and innovation that resulted in his selection as keynote speaker on a night when the convention program will focus on renewing America's economy."

Warner, 53, a native of Indiana, is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, a fortune that grew out of the telecommunications industry. After an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate in 1996, he was elected governor of Virginia, a state dominated by Republicans, in 2001 and left office four years later wildly popular and with a reputation for moderation and bipartisanship.

Prohibited by law from succeeding himself as governor, he flirted with a 2008 presidential run but announced in the fall of 2006 that he did not want to disrupt his family life with another political campaign. Earlier this year, he announced his candidacy to succeed the state's retiring Republican senior senator, John Warner, no relation.

Warner, in response to the Obama announcement, issued a statement saying he was "excited about this chance to showcase some of the initiatives" he led as governor - "the Virginia success story." The announcement included an invitation for voters to sign up on his Web site to receive his "convention diary" during the Democratic gathering, a ploy that could provide him contact information for thousands of party activists, a valuable asset should he decide to seek the presidency in the future.

Warner will share the evening of Aug. 26 with Clinton, who many party activists believe will one day seek the party's nomination again. And Larry Sabato, the founder of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said it is unlikely that Warner will upstage Clinton at the convention.

"I don't think anybody could eclipse Clinton," Sabato, who has closely followed Warner's career, said in an interview. "She'll get the main headline, but that's OK. We think all this petty stuff matters but all most people remember from a convention is the vice presidential pick and the nominee's acceptance speech."

However, the keynote address at the national convention is widely regarded as an important platform from which to audition for a future presidential campaign. For example, the keynote speaker at the 2004 election was Obama himself, and after that highly praised performance, the Illinois senator was included in virtually every list of potential candidates for the 2008 nomination.

Scott Shepard's e-mail address is sshepard(at)coxnews.com.