During his final State of the Commonwealth address Wednesday night in Richmond, Gov. Mark Warner referred to his four-year term in office as “an incredible journey” and noted that “the moment I will cherish the most” came when he was able to merge his high-tech business savvy with his desire to see the educational needs of all of Virginia’s young people met.

In a very personable and direct way, Warner said his moment came last fall when he participated in an announcement in Lebanon, Va., concerning the CGI-AMS plans to create 300 software development jobs — “Jobs that any community anywhere in this country would love to have,” Warner said.

As state party chair and as an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate, Gov. Warner honed his networking skills, but when he was elected governor, he made it clear that he wanted to be a force for education as well as an advocate of developing the state’s high-tech economy. The CGI-AMS announcement in Russell County represented a combination of both of those components.

While that was Warner’s personal moment, historians may find something else about his stay in the governor’s mansion to represent his legacy. When he took the helm, the legislators of the General Assembly were at loggerheads as they tried to deal with former Gov. Jim Gilmore’s car tax elimination promise. The state’s economy was floundering even before 9/11 sent shock waves through the U.S. economy, and Gilmore’s unbending commitment to his car tax proposal left the state with some tall mountains to climb.

Warner took a systematic approach to addressing the two issues at hand. He brought stability to the state revenue flow by working for passage of a tax reformation plan that saved Virginia’s bond rating. But perhaps more importantly, he worked to break down the barriers that separated Republicans and Democrats and constantly urged them to work together to find bipartisan solutions to the problems facing the Commonwealth.

It will take time before the financial reforms and the bipartisan bridges of the Warner administration can be fully view against the backdrop of the special challenges facing the state, nation and world in the post 9/11 world, but Warner’s results-oriented approach and his consensus-building strategy seems to have paid a positive benefit for the Old Dominion.