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A political newcomer and former reality star running in Virginia’s Democratic senatorial primary is causing an uproar in his party after breaking with them on gerrymandering and a slew of new gun control efforts.
Mark Moran, a former contestant on the HBOMax series “FBoy Island” and previously a Wall Street banker, is challenging longtime Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark R. Warner, D-Va., whom he calls an “oligarch” who is no longer serving his constituents.
Warner is the former richest and now fourth-richest senator, with a net worth upwards of $200 million, and is running for his fourth term despite a snippet unearthed by Moran showing him pledging to serve only two.
“Since the establishment is already mad at me, here’s another truth: Virginia Democrats are completely wrong on the Second Amendment,” Moran said on X after invoking the ire of Virginia’s top Senate Democrat for opposing her politically-charged redistricting effort.
YOUR 2A RIGHTS ARE ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK AS VIRGINIA DEMS PLOT INSANE GUN BANS
Mark Moran, a Centerview Partners alum and former head of business development and operations for financial influencer account Litquidity, is starting Equity Animal, a company focused on investor relations and corporate marketing for publicly traded companies, in New York on July 29, 2022. (Zack DeZon/Bloomberg)
“After facing a personal safety issue, I got a gun. It made me realize how extreme our party’s stance has become,” Moran said. “Dan Helmer’s (loser) July 1st ban literally classifies regular handguns as ‘assault firearms’ so the government can take them away.”
Helmer, a Democratic state delegate from Fairfax, did not respond to a request for comment. He already launched a bid to run in one of the newly-drawn, allegedly gerrymandered congressional districts that have yet to be approved by the voters on April 21.
Moran said the Founding Fathers crafted the Second Amendment to protect the U.S. from tyranny.
“[That is] whether that tyranny comes from Donald Trump or a state legislature trying to disarm you. Our right to protect ourselves shall not be infringed,” Moran said.
The Falls Church native’s comments irritated a handful of other Democratic figures within a few hours of his post, including Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko — the founder of “Ready For Hillary” when the former first lady was eyeing the White House in the mid-2010s.
GOP-LED COUNTIES PUSH BACK AGAINST DEMOCRAT’S REDISTRICTING CHARGE, TESTING VIRGINIA’S CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITS
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia are seen. (Mike Kropf/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Getty Images)
“Go be a p—- in someone else’s party. We’re not doing that anymore,” Parkhomenko said on X in response to Moran.
Virginia Senate President L. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, who has posted at-times raunchy memes celebrating Democrats’ flip of the governorship and push to draw out all but one Republican congressman in Virginia, lambasted Moran’s tweet on that matter, spurring his gun rights commentary.
“Anyone against our redistricting efforts to stand up to Donald Trump doesn’t share our values as Democrats,” Lucas said in a statement on X. “If you want to oppose redistricting, you picked the wrong primary to run in. [By the way] I endorse Mark Warner.”
Moran had called his fellow Democrats’ cartographical creativity “extremely anti-democratic and that it is a reactionary policy to Donald Trump that was created by DC consultants.”
He noted that Virginia voters already approved a resolution in 2019 to remove the legislature from redistricting considerations and slammed the new maps for “slic[ing] up Arlington and tak[ing] away the voices of everyone outside Northern Virginia.”
“In every local Democratic committee I’ve been in, when this issue comes up, nobody can defend it, it’s just ‘well this is what the party says is best’ — NO. The Democratic Party loses because of reactionary maneuvers and because it doesn’t have a big bold vision for the future,” he said.
VIRGINIA DEM ADMITS REDISTRICTING PUSH AIMS TO ‘STOP TRUMP’, NOT ABOUT ‘FAIRNESS’
“I can’t hold my tongue any longer despite what this will do to me with the Dems in Virginia.”
Moran also has spoken out against the proliferation of data centers in Virginia, sucking up power from the grid in both West Virginia and Virginia and allegedly increasing costs on residential consumers.
He posited a plan to tax the data centers to create a free-college fund.
The Virginia State Capitol during the inauguration ceremony of Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger in Richmond on Jan. 17. State Democratic lawmakers have introduced more than 50 new tax or tax increases to the legislature for things like dog walking, deliveries and dry cleaning. (Kendall Warner/The Virginian-Pilot)
While Moran came across moderate on those issues, a report from the New York Post showed his campaign platform includes abolishing ICE and passing Medicare-for-All, which the paper said places him to Warner’s left on those key issues.
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“This year is the 250th anniversary of our country; now is the time for a peaceful revolution against the billionaires, the tech oligarchs, the data centers and all the other big money interests,” he said in a statement obtained by the Post.
Digital reached out to Warner’s campaign, Moran’s campaign and Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s office for comment.
