Sen. Mark Warner wins re-election in Virginia

Welcome in. After months of campaigning, political ads and ballots cast, it all comes down to tonight. This is Fox 5 Live, the midterm elections 2026, also streaming on Fox Local. I'm Jim Locke. And I'm Rita Marrocco. It is 7 o'clock in the east where polls just closed in Virginia, but voting continues tonight in Maryland and in D.C. Polls there are set to close in less than an hour at 8 p.m. But before the polls can close, everybody in line still needs to cast their ballot. Let's give you a live look right now at a polling site. We're going to go to Maryland right now. This is the Laurel Beltsville Senior Activity Center. And by the way, some early problems. We've been told that there were ballot shortages there. Nationwide, all eyes on several key Senate and House seats to determine who will control Congress. All 435 House seats are on the ballot and 35 Senate seats as well. We have crews out all across our region tonight. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, we have you covered. Fox 5 Chief Legal Correspondent Katie Barlow is tracking the results of several ballot referendums. Tom Fitzgerald has his eyes on some key congressional races. And Sydney Persing is live on Capitol Hill. Tracking the impact it will have in Congress. But let's begin tonight in the Commonwealth, where polls just closed. Fox 5's Josh Rosenthal live at Senator Mark Warner's campaign headquarters as he seeks to win re-election. Josh, good evening. Well, guys, we are at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center. I can tell you people are already very excited here at this watch party. And with polls closing at 7 o'clock in Virginia, I think it's safe to say they're about to get even more excited. A number of candidates on the ballot here tonight. Senator Mark Warner, you can see the setup for him. Also, a very special guest we've got here, Representative Don Beyer, who's on the ballot himself. Sir, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're probably feeling pretty good about your own race right now. I am, but, you know, 30 seconds after 7 o'clock, AP just called the race from our corner. Oh, they just called it? Just called it while you were speaking, yeah. You're breaking some news here on Fox 5 DC, sir. Yeah, so it's good. They haven't called our races yet, but we're down to it. I'd say you're probably one of the next ones in the hopper. Robert, how are you feeling? That was a quick race. Why do you think it came so quickly? Well, I think there's just enormous pushback with what's happened in the last two years because of our current president's leadership. Overwhelmingly, people are concerned about prices, affordability, gasoline, groceries, interest rates on the home. And there's also an enormous increasing concern about corruption. Sadly, we're seeing corruption like we've never seen before. A president that makes almost $1.4 billion in his first year. So Americans don't like that. They want political leaders to be above board, clean, doing it for the right reasons. You've been around for a long time. You've seen a lot of midterm elections. Can you remember one quite like this? And if not, why? I can't for a Democrat ever. You know, we did take the House back in 2018, but we didn't know. We didn't think we necessarily would. Here now we have like 47 races that we think we can actually win. Which is remarkably high. As I say, the president's pretty unpopular, especially here in Virginia. And, you know, the president's made this race about him. Probably not good political strategy. So I'm going to point it out today. They've had a lot of money, almost an infinite amount of money. But the only message has been Donald Trump. And that has not worked, whereas we've run on affordability and corruption, AI safety, on things that make a difference in people's lives. We talked about how unique this midterm election has been. Representative Beyer and I were talking before we went on air here. You were saying that you were door-knocking today, I believe, trying to find voters. Give the viewers that story, because I thought this was interesting. Well, this is over the weekend, too. We found that all the people that Storstein knocked on were under 25. And it turns out most of them were the kids of the adults that lived at home. Mom and dad had voted. Grandparents had voted. They were off at school or they moved to Salt Lake City. We didn't pick up a lot of votes. You had trouble finding people who had not voted because so many people voted early this time around in Virginia. Josh, we have it on our phones. It says already voted, already voted. So you don't knock on those doors because it doesn't serve any purpose. I'm sure people were happy to see you nonetheless, Representative Beyer. One more for you. I'm going to put you on the spot. Long night ahead. How are you feeling about the Senate? Well, optimistic. I mean, a week's a long time in politics. We don't know what's going to happen. Increasingly, the polls are not trustworthy. It's interesting. I was talking to the CEO of Calci today, who said the 75% chance that we'll take back the Senate. And those are from not poll people, but people who are investing money all over the country and what they think will happen. So I'm optimistic. It'd be great to have both houses. We will still have President Trump. We're going to have to find a way to... Resist him where we must. Sir, Ken, thank you for your time. We really appreciate it. Thank you, John. Good luck with the rest of the night tonight. I'm sure we'll see you around. And for the people at home, just take a look up here. You can see the podium. It's all set up. We are expecting, I believe it's five, six speakers. I got the list. Lots of high-profile Virginia elected officials. We'll bring portions of that to you live. We're expecting it to start. It's all very fluid, but likely sometime in the next 30 or so minutes. For now, guys, back to you. Yeah, and once again, this is, Mark Warner has said, this would be his last term in the U.S. Senate after one term as governor and several terms in the U.S. Senate, but one more six-year term for Senator Warner. Josh Rosenblatt for us tonight there.