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After months of delay, the race for Virginia’s Senate seat is now set, with a Republican contender emerging to enter a three-way fight in the quest to oust longtime Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.
Bert Mizusawa clinched the Republican nomination for Senate in The Old Dominion against two other hopefuls eyeing Warner’s seat, and a chance for power in a state that hasn’t sent a Republican to the upper chamber in more than two decades.
Warner is a formidable opponent, having won his last election by roughly 12 points and commanding a position of power on the Senate Intelligence Committee. It’s also a race that is not on the national Republican map for flip opportunities.
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Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., speaks at a hearing in Washington in 2025. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
None of the three Republican hopefuls have held public office before, but have made their careers working in government, the intelligence community or serving in the military.
Mizusawa, a former Major General in the military, has forayed into politics before, launching unsuccessful bids for the House and Senate over the last 16 years.
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He was tapped by President Donald Trump to serve as his foreign policy advisor and later acted as director of national security policy for his transition team in 2016. Trump then tapped him to serve in the Central Intelligence Agency as a senior advisor for national security technology and business integration.
His primary focuses, if elected, are tackling the nation’s debt, affordability and to be a “pro-military Senator,” according to his campaign website.
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Kalshi is a federally regulated U.S.-based prediction market exchange that allows users to trade on the outcomes of political, economic and other real-world events. (Laura Brett/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Mizusawa isn’t alone in the bid to unseat Warner, who is running for a fourth term in the upper chamber.
Investment banker and former reality TV contestant Mark Moran is running a third-party independent campaign after opting to dump his initial push against Warner as a Democrat.
Moran made headlines earlier this year when he revealed that he wanted to get caught by the prediction market platform Kalshi for betting on himself in his campaign. Moran was fined over $6,000 after refusing to strike a deal with Kalshi.
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He told Fox News Digital at the time that his decision to bet on himself was effectively free marketing for his campaign.
“I know that they’re going to come after me when I place a bet on myself. So I do that knowing that for the low price of about $100, I can get more attention on me, as evidenced by your calling me, than anything else that I could do with my ideas as a politician,” Moran said.
“Because we don’t live in a constitutional republic where ideas can win. We live in one owned by the donor class,” he continued.