Story by Chris Graham
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A basketball injury has Mark Warner on the shelf – forcing the former governor to cancel a slew of scheduled U.S. Senate campaign appearances today in the Shenandoah Valley.
The injury, which dates back two weeks, should not interfere with his planned Aug. 26 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, he said by phone from a hospital bed in Charlottesville.
“Let me assure you that I would love to be there with everyone. I guess the first message point that I’d want to give to everybody is what I’ve been told by everybody here – 53-year-old guys shouldn’t be playing basketball with 18-year-olds,” Warner told a crowd gathered at the Waynesboro Democratic Committee ’08 campaign headquarters for what was supposed to have been the first of two Warner campaign events in the River City.
Warner had also been slated for a walking tour of Downtown Waynesboro this afternoon – and later was to deliver the keynote address at tonight’s Paint the Valley Blue local Democratic Party fundraiser.
A campaign staffer said Warner was injured playing a pickup basketball game two weeks ago and reinjured himself earlier this week. He ignored a doctor’s advice to stay off his feet for a couple of days to let that injury heal, and then had difficulty getting around early this morning before a scheduled event in Charlottesville.
Warner said he expects to be out of the hospital tomorrow. “They just wanted to monitor something overnight,” Warner said. “But I expect to be out tomorrow, and I will probably be a little bit slower for a couple of days. But we’ll be back out on the campaign trail by the beginning of the week, and it will have no effect on the convention appearance.”
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