Jim Gilmore - Senate Campaign

Senate Campaign

See also: United States Senate election in Virginia, 2008

In an interview with Politico.com, Gilmore said that he had been approached to run for the Senate seat of John Warner, who announced his retirement for his senate term ending in 2009. By the end of the summer, many media outlets, most notably the Washington Post, thought it would be a foregone conclusion that Gilmore would jump into the Senate race. Gilmore's successor as governor, Mark Warner, had already announced in September, and 11th District Congressman Tom Davis had informally announced his candidacy a few days after Mark Warner's announcement.

Gilmore lobbied strongly for choosing the party's nominee at a statewide convention rather than a primary, claiming that a convention would cost only $1 million versus the $4 million required to run a primary campaign. This was no small consideration, as the race for the Democratic nomination essentially ended with Mark Warner's entry into the race. It was understood that Warner would use his considerable wealth to self-finance his campaign. It was thought that a convention would favor Gilmore, since most of the delegates would come from the party's activist base, which is tilted strongly to the right. A primary was thought to favor Davis due to his popularity in voter-rich Northern Virginia; Davis is a moderate Republican, and most Republicans in Northern Virginia tend to be more moderate than their counterparts elsewhere in the state. On October 13, 2007 the state party's central committee voted 47–37 to hold a convention rather than a primary. With this decision, Gilmore said he was seriously considering a run for the Senate.

Gilmore formally announced his candidacy via a YouTube video on November 19, 2007. He said that he was running to give Virginia "a strong and steady hand" in the Senate. The domain name jimgilmoreforsenate.com had been registered on July 10—four months before Gilmore's formal entry-- and the username that uploaded the video to YouTube had been registered on October 16.

Gilmore faced a challenge from his right in State Delegate Bob Marshall of Prince William County. Marshall charged Gilmore with being too soft on abortion. However, at the convention Gilmore won the nomination by 65 votes out of 3,000 cast—less than a percentage point.

In the November election, Gilmore was defeated, winning only 34 percent of the vote to Warner's 65 percent. Gilmore only carried four counties in the state—Rockingham, Augusta, Powhatan and Hanover. In many cases, he lost in many areas of the state that are normally reliably Republican.