Much of Tom Perriello’s success has stemmed from his decision to spend campaign funds on a summer internship program instead of stockpiling it for the October TV blitz. These 15 “Common Good Summer Fellows,” many of them from Southside, ran Perriello offices throughout the district, knocked on doors, put out signs, organized Perriello speaking events and put 10 percent of their time to volunteer projects. And among their ranks was a name familiar to Charlottesville: Brian Bills.
Bills was named one of our C-VILLE 20 in 2006—he founded the Young Liberals, a group at Charlottesville High with more than 100 members, and even though he wasn’t old enough to vote, he was credited by city Democrats for getting out the vote in Dave Norris and Julian Taliaferro’s City Council race against incumbent Republican Rob Schilling.
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Brian Bills |
When Bills went off to Yale in 2007, I thought he was off the local radar screen—until I found him manning Perriello’s Martinsville office this summer. “I had originally hoped to be in Charlottesville, but the campaign said that Martinsville would be more helpful to them,” says Bills. He had never been down to that part of Virginia. “There really wasn’t any hostility to me as an outsider. I had a great time canvassing there. When you come down to it, voters are voters, and if you underestimate them, you do so at your own risk.”
Now Bills has taken off the semester from college to work as Perriello’s special assistant.
“It was a really tough decision for me, and I kept putting it off and putting it off and finally Tom said, ‘Let us know before you go to bed tonight,’” says Bills, one of 10 summer interns still working for the campaign. “I stayed up a long time on that one. I really did want to go back to school, but at the same time, this was the election of a lifetime.”
Just what is a special assistant? Bills says he describes his role to friends as that of Charlie from “The West Wing,” the young personal aide to the president.
“It’s just a much more comprehensive view of the campaign than I’ve ever had before,” says Bills. He’s with Perriello all the time—listening to his calls in the car, watching him review press releases, seeing him interact with people across the district. “I’m amazed that Tom is able to keep up the schedule that he does. It’s rare to find a politician where the more time you spend around them, the more you like them. I’m with Tom 24/7, and you’d think that I’d be absolutely sick of him by now.”
So does it make Bills himself more or less likely to go into politics?
“The pressure and the exhausting schedule and all these complications of a campaign that I sort of was shielded from before—it’s very educational,” he says, “and probably makes me less likely to go into politics.”
