Virginia Remembers “Mrs. John Warner”

Decades before John McCain zinged Barack Obama for being a celebrity, the Commonwealth had its own political celebrity, Mrs. John Warner (aka Elizabeth Taylor).  Taylor, who married Richard Nixon’s Navy Secretary John Warner in 1976, was a fixture on the campaign trail and in Republican circles throughout their almost six-year marriage.

Today, as we observe the passing of one of Hollywood’s luminaries, it is interesting to reflect that for a brief period, Cleopatra called the Commonwealth home, sometimes living the “most ordinary life” of a Fauquier County farm wife.  Whether emceeing a race at the Martinsville Speedway, accompanying her husband on campaign stops (including an infamous visit to Big Stone Gap) or leading acting clinics at Roanoke College, Taylor brought a glamor to Virginia politics that Lisa Collis, Hong Le Webb and even Maureen McDonnell have not.  That’s not even to broach the political question of whether Taylor’s star appeal was what gave her husband enough support to eek out a narrow victory in the 1978 general election.

By all accounts, Elizabeth Taylor was a natural on the campaign trail.  Whether it was a genuine love for John Warner, an actress playing to “her public” or a keen interest in politics, Taylor seemingly reveled in the minutia of campaigning, lamenting that it wasn’t the hard work and long hours of the campaign that ended her marriage to Warner, but instead her boredom with the unfulfilling role of Senator’s Wife.

In an Associated Press interview, she said she “really loved” Warner, but came to realize there was no place for her in the senator’s life.

“I would have done anything – licked stamps, typed speeches, run errands,” she said. Instead, she was told to go home.

“It became very unsatisfying,” she told the AP. “There was nothing for me to do except sit at home and watch the boob tube.”

…She wrote that “being a senator’s wife is thoroughly debilitating” and that after sharing the campaign with her husband she was consigned to “a kind of domestic Siberia once he was elected. . . . I don’t think I’ve ever been so alone in my life as when I was Mrs. Senator.”

 

Such ended the glamorous Taylor-era of Virginia politics.  John Warner did well for himself in his solo career and Elizabeth Taylor would later return to her political background to lobby Congress for funding for AIDS research, often supported by her ex-husband, with whom she remained friends.  Although her time in Virginia was relatively brief, the outpouring of well wishes and memories from the Commonwealth suggests that Virginians still have fond memories of the late Mrs. John Warner.

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About the author

Jason Johnson

A lifelong political junkie, Jason caught the political bug as a fifth grader after meeting George Allen in 1993. Since then he has studied political science at both the undergraduate and graduate level. When not perusing the blogs or volunteering for conservative Republicans, Jason enjoys cheering on his beloved Virginia Tech Hokies and spending time at his Bedford County home.