 In
2003, Mark D. Obenshain was elected to the Virginia State Senate
for the 26th District. In the Senate, Obenshain serves on four
Committees: Courts of Justice, Local Government, Agriculture,
Conservation and Natural Resources and Privileges and Elections.In his professional life, Senator Obenshain is one of the founders of the Harrisonburg and Charlottesville based law firm of Lenhart Obenshain PC. For twenty years, Obenshain has practiced law in Harrisonburg and in Central Virginia. His law practice has involved the representation of business and individual clients in a wide range of matters. In addition to his law practice and service in the Senate, Obenshain is active in a variety of civic, community, professional and political organizations. He served as a member of the Board of Visitors of James Madison University where he successfully advocated the implementation of an American History requirement for graduation. In 1994, Senator Obenshain served on the Governor’s Commission on Citizen Empowerment, which Governor Allen charged with conducting a review of Virginia’s public assistance programs and with making recommendations for comprehensive welfare reform. The recommendations from that Commission were largely adopted in Virginia’s landmark and successful 1995 Welfare Reform legislation. He subsequently served as a member of the Commission on Welfare Reform.  Locally,
Senator Obenshain serves as a member of the Board of Directors
of the Harrisonburg Education Foundation. He has served as a
member of the Board of Directors of Mercy House and the
Shenandoah Valley Technology Council. He has also served as a
member of the Business Advisory Board for the Harrisonburg
Rescue Squad. Senator Obenshain and his wife Suzanne have two children, Anne Tucker (18) and Sam (16), and they are active members of First Presbyterian Church in Harrisonburg. Obenshain has been politically active for nearly 30 years. He served as chairman of the Harrisonburg City and Rockingham County Republican Committees for a combined total of seven years. Obenshain has served as a GOP precinct chairman, as vice-chairman of the two committees and has been a delegate to every GOP State Convention since 1980. In 1980, he was a member of Virginia’s delegation to the Republican National Convention, which nominated Ronald Reagan to run for President. He also has worked on the campaigns of virtually every Republican nominee for state and local office since he began his law practice in Harrisonburg in 1987. Obenshain serves as President of the Richard D. Obenshain Foundation, which provides the Republican Party of Virginia with the building that is its permanent home. Senator Obenshain was raised in a household in which politics was the most frequent topic for dinner table conversation. His father, Richard D. Obenshain, is regarded by many as the architect of the modern Republican Party in Virginia. Richard Obenshain served as Chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia from 1972 until 1976, when he was appointed Co-Chairman of the Republican National Committee. As a Virginia Republican leader, he played an instrumental role in persuading conservative Virginia Democrats to join the Republican Party. This was part of a major realignment in Virginia politics. Among those who converted were Governor Mills Godwin, Congressman John O. Marsh, Congressman Thomas Bliley, Congressman D. French Slaughter, Jr. and many others. The elder Obenshain ran for Congress in 1964, for Attorney General of Virginia in 1969, and for U.S. Senate in 1978. In the 1978 contest, Richard Obenshain ran in a crowded field, which included former Governor Linwood Holton, State Senator Nathan Miller and former Secretary of the Navy John Warner. In what was, at the time, the largest political convention ever held, Obenshain won the GOP nomination well after midnight on the sixth ballot. On August 2, 1978, while returning home from a campaign trip in the northern Shenandoah Valley, Obenshain died in a plane crash near his home in Chesterfield County. The GOP then nominated John Warner, the eventual winner, to succeed Obenshain. |
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