"Alexandria Democrat Mark R. Warner campaigned for governor in Charlottesville on Tuesday as a businessman fed-up with what he called, 'politics as usual.'

He promised two crowds to put government on a business diet and to campaign and govern by moving 'beyond partisan politics' and beyond regional and ideological divisions that he said have held Virginia back.

On the fifth day of an 11-day campaign announcement swing across the state, Warner told more than 140 supporters at the Charlottesville Ice Park that he's got 'a record of innovation.'

'As a businessman I am a fiscal conservative. I am proud of that,' Warner told his second audience of the day, having made similar remarks at a $25-per-person breakfast to a crowd the same size at the Downtown Grill.

'I recognize that a government, like a business, has to live within its means,' said Warner, a multimillionaire venture capitalist who has helped start more than 70 businesses that have created more than 22,000 jobs.

Tim and Daphne Maxwell Reid

'If there's ever a case of an organization that needs a management change now, it's VDOT,' the former chairman of the Commonwealth Transportation Board said of the Virginia Department of Transportation.

'Never a project on time or on budget,' Warner said.

'That's not the way I operate my business. It's not the way you operate yours. It shouldn't be the way we operate the state's budget.'

No one has been accountable for a Springfield 'mixing bowlr highway project that was supposed to cost $300 million and now has costs approaching $600 million, he said.

The 46-year-old Warner, who ran unsuccessfully for Sen. John W. Warner's seat in 1996, laced his remarks with criticism of this year's General Assembly session that left Richmond on Feb. 24 without agreeing on budget amendments and of Gov. Jim Gilmore for hitting college building projects hard since then.

Virginia's colleges and universities 'are the idea factories,' Warner said.

'They should not be the first place a governor goes to cut the budget when times are tough.'

Warner, who has never held elective office, has no Democratic opponent for governor. On Nov. 6, he will face the winner of the Republican Party's June 2 nominating convention contest between Attorney General Mark L. Earley and Lt. Gov. John H. Hager.

Warner is a former state Democratic Party chairman under former governor L. Douglas Wilder, whose successful 1989 campaign be managed.

State Sen. Emily Couric, a Charlottesville Democrat who chairs the state Democratic Party, introduced Warner as 'a new kind of leader. ... He's not politics as usual. He's not short little slogans.'

James B. Murray Jr., a former rector at the College of William and Mary and an Albemarle County business partner of Warner's, called him someone capable of fixing a state political system that 'is broken.'

'The business community is really getting behind him,' Murray said.

'I think they are disappointed at the lack of governance at the state level.'

Murray said be is impressed 'by the number of Republicans and independents contributing to this campaign,' groups that have accounted for more than half of Warner's campaign cash. His campaign reported that it had raised more than $4 million by January.

Del. V. Earl Dickinson, a Louisa County Democrat who attended the breakfast for Warner, said he 'has charisma. You may compare him with the Kennedys.'

'If I was a betting man, I would bet Mark Warner is the next governor' because of his strength as a businessman seeking to be the first governor with a business background elected in Virginia since Thomas Stanley in 1953.

Warner said the next governor will face a responsibility to help every part of Virginia grow and attract new jobs, not just 'Charlottesville and Northern Virginia.'

'We will never prosper if rural Virginia is left behind, and I will make one of my top priorities to make sure that rural Virginia is not left out of the economic boom of the 21st century,' Warner said.

'We've got to make sure that we recognize that we can't foul our environment, our air and our water - that we are simply stewards on. God's earth and we have a responisibility to pass it on to our kids and, our grandkids in better shape than we inherited it,' he said.

After his remarks, Warner said in an interview that Virginia must take a comprehensive look at overhauling an antiquated tax system.

'If I am hired, I will continue the elimination of the car tax,' Warner, said. 'The structure of the Virginia tax code needs a thorough reexamination, particularly the relationship between the state and localities' " (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, March 14, 2001).