Issues facing the African-American Community
Senator Warner has a more than 30-year record of strong support for the African-American community in Virginia.
As a private citizen, Senator Warner served as the campaign manager for Doug Wilder, who was elected in 1989 as the first African-American governor of Virginia. He was also the founding chairman of the Virginia Health Care Foundation, which has made more than 3.5 million patient visits possible since 1992 and generated more than $5.6 billion in free medication for underserved Virginians. Through his personal foundation, Senator Warner created the Virginia High Tech Partnership, which recruited students from all five Virginia HBCUs to serve internships in the tech industry, as well as the Tech Riders, which brought free computer training to predominantly African-American churches throughout Virginia in the late 1990s. He was also honored to serve on the board of Virginia Union University, which is one of Virginia’s excellent Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
As the 69th Governor of Virginia, Mark Warner continued his work to bring inclusion and economic opportunity for all to the Commonwealth. When he was inaugurated, he pledged to build an administration that would draw on Virginia’s increasing diversity as a source of strength, creating the most open and diverse administration in the history of the Commonwealth to that point. He signed legislation requiring, for the first time, racial sensitivity training for the Virginia State Police. He authorized the state’s first comprehensive study of disparities in state contracting and increased opportunities for minority-owned businesses to compete for state contracts. As a result, the Commonwealth’s procurement from women-owned and minority-owned businesses nearly quadrupled during his administration. Together with First Lady Lisa Collis, he spearheaded an effort to place a Civil Rights Memorial on the grounds of the State Capitol in Richmond, and with his support, the General Assembly created and funded a scholarship program for those who were denied educational opportunities in Prince Edward County during the policy of “massive resistance” in the 1960s. In 2005, 48 Virginians were awarded scholarships totaling $128,000 from the fund. He also oversaw the largest expansion of health care for children, signing up 138,000 children for health care over the course of his governorship.
After his election to the Senate in 2008, Senator Warner continued his efforts.
Following the violence and domestic terrorist attacks in the summer of 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, Senator Warner led a resolution, which was signed into law, that condemned White nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, and other hate groups, and demanded action to combat this growing threat. Senator Warner is also a lead sponsor of the Khalid Jabara- Heather Heyer NO Hate Act, named after Heather Heyer, the young Virginian who was killed by a white supremacist in Charlottesville. The bill incentivizes and encourages state and local law enforcement agencies to comprehensively collect and report hate crime data to the FBI.
Senator Warner is a sponsor of the Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore provisions of the Voting Rights Act that were gutted by the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder. Sen. Warner continues to oppose voter suppression, whether it be discriminatory voter ID laws, shady voter roll purges, or racially gerrymandered electoral maps. He also led efforts to highlight the systemic efforts by Russia in 2018 to specifically target black voters, sowing disinformation and distrust.
In 2017, he helped pass legislation establishing the 400 Years of African-American History Commission to commemorate the 400th anniversary in 2019 of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans into English Colonial America and has worked with the commission to achieve their goals over the last two years. After the commission initially received no federal funding from a then-Republican controlled Congress, Sen. Warner worked with his colleagues to secure $3.3 million to fund the commission's work in 2019. He is also a sponsor of the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act, which would finally take steps towards acknowledging a painful chapter in American history by classifying lynching as a federal crime for the first time.
Senator Warner has been a champion on housing reform, including ensuring access to credit, affordable housing for all, and preserving the 30-year fixed mortgage. After the 2008 housing crisis, Senator Warner worked closely with faith and community leaders in Prince William County, the hardest-hit Virginia locality during the home mortgage meltdown, to successfully engage the country’s leading banks to provide additional targeted assistance for homeowners.
He has supported efforts to encourage entrepreneurship, including for small, minority-owned, and start-up companies through legislation and local convening efforts. He has championed legislation to help lower student loan debt, including efforts to allow employers to help their employees pay down their debt with tax-free dollars or help students on the front end access all the student aid and understand their options with a simplified form. In 2019, Sen. Warner worked with a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to pass the FUTURE Act, which permanently secured $255 million in funding for HBCUs and minority-serving institutions that Congress had allowed to expire earlier that year. In 2018, that funding represented nearly $4 million for Virginia's five HBCU's: Virginia Union University, Norfolk State University, Virginia State University, Hampton University, and Virginia University of Lynchburg.
