Can he go the distance?

A strange flower is in full bloom this time of year in the neighborhoods of Charlottesville: the political campaign sign. Though it makes an annual appearance, it is particularly abundant every four years. And this year, there’s a bumper crop, with three dominant strains: Obama for President, Warner for Senate, and Perriello for Congress. You can’t go a half block without seeing them sprouting from yards and highway rights of way—a particularly large one even dominates the kudzu on the banks overlooking the 250 Bypass. The name on that sign: Perriello.

If all you saw were the neighborhoods of Charlottesville, you might think Tom Perriello was already picking out his Capitol Hill office furniture. But, much to the chagrin of the 70-something percent of Charlottesvillians who vote in vain biannually for someone other than Virgil Goode to represent them in Congress, the Fifth District extends beyond Belmont and the student ghettos of UVA. Even factoring in Albemarle County, which will almost certainly go for Perriello over Goode albeit with a lower percentage than Charlottesville, this area is only 21 percent of Fifth District voters, a block of blue atop a broader wash of red that runs south down routes 29 and 15.

Goode has won the Fifth District congressional race three times as a Republican, twice as a Democrat and once as an Independent over the course of the past 12 years. His margin of victory has never been less than 19 points. But without a doubt, Perriello is putting up the toughest fight for the seat that Goode has ever seen. Compared to his Democratic predecessors J.W. Boyd, Meredith Richards and Al Weed, Perriello has raised more money, honed a sharper message and invested more to get his name out. He has put a lot of sweat into sowing those signs that line not just the streets of Charlottesville but the highways near Danville and Martinsville and Clarksville.

Yet even with more than $1 million in funds, a quiver of political zingers, and dozens of enthusiastic young volunteers, Perriello faces a Herculean effort. To go to Washington as the Fifth District’s congressman, Tom Perriello—the 33-year-old, well-traveled lawyer son of local pediatrician Vito Perriello—will have to carry counties that have long given 60 and 70 percent of their votes to Virgil Goode.

Congressional districts are usually odd things that bear little relation to the way people would group themselves. Composed of four cities and 18 counties, the Fifth District is one of those fun bits of gerrymandering. It’s weighted on its extremities, with Charlottesville/Albemarle the biggest voter block with 93,000 registered, followed by Danville/Pittsylvania with 69,000. The rest of the district is scattered. You have the Lynchburg suburbanites in Campbell County, the retirees of Smith Mountain Lake in Franklin and Bedford counties, the blue collar former factory workers of Martinsville and its adjacent Collinsville in Henry County, and all the rural stretches in between. Pointedly excoriated are the cities of Lynchburg and Roanoke, which give their heft instead to the Sixth District and the Ninth District respectively (Republicans reportedly twisted Goode’s arm into joining their party by threatening to put Roanoke in his district and make him compete with Democrat Rick Boucher).

To unseat the Congressman from Rocky Mount and give the people of Charlottesville a new representative, the Yale grad with the funny name must win the confidence of Virginia’s Southside.

The return of the native

In his speeches, Tom Perriello frames himself as one in a generation of political cynics who gravitated toward the business and nonprofit sector until he gradually realized that the decisions in Washington matter even if the people making them play party games. In 2007, Perriello moved back to Charlottesville ostensibly for a lecturer’s position at UVA law school.

“I was really meant to be completing some analysis on the Afghanistan and Darfur work that I’d done while I was teaching,” says Perriello, “and I was back and forth to home throughout that time period and heard increasing irritation from an ever-growing sector of Republicans and Democrats about Congressman Goode. And I remained upset at the lack of leadership from the national Democrats in terms of providing commonsense alternatives, so it seemed like an opportunity at that point to run.”

Part of the knock on Perriello is that he came back to Albemarle just to run for Congress, but Perriello says that he hadn’t decided whether to run when he moved back and that the decision came after a conversation with Mitch Van Yahres, Charlottesville’s beloved Democratic former state delegate who died in February

“We talked a long time about the race,” says Perriello. “I had been a page for him in Richmond back in the day and he was very encouraging and thought that [running] was something that should be done. I had always seen him as an example of someone who has been able to be in politics and remain a straight shooter with a lot of integrity, and I took his advice and guidance very seriously.”

Perriello grew up in Albemarle County, attending western Albemarle public schools before graduating from Saint Anne’s-Belfield. He went to Yale for college, spent some time working for a nonprofit involved in “sustainability” issues, and went back to Yale for law school, graduating in 2001. Following that, Perriello spent a lot of time overseas. He worked as an assistant to the international prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which indicted the brutal dictator of Liberia, Charles Taylor, for crimes against humanity. He has worked stints as a national security consultant in Kosova, Darfur and twice in Afghanistan for the International Center for Transitional Justice. After returning from Sierra Leone in 2003, he co-founded a nonprofit, Res Publica, that spawns other groups. Among them are Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which takes positions typically associated with Democrats on issues like poverty, health care and the Iraq war, and Avaaz.org (co-founded with MoveOn.org), which tries to organize people internationally on issues like poverty, human rights and the environment.

When Perriello first announced his candidacy and started networking in late 2007, he talked a lot about his international service. Last year on election day, he was already working hard for the Democratic nomination, and spoke to seniors at the now defunct Ponderosa on Pantops: “As I come back to the United States, I’m struck increasingly that what’s wrong in the United States goes much deeper than the fact that our health care system is broken or people in the Southside are losing jobs,” he said, stopping to clarify that those jobs are indeed important. He then moved on to his larger point. “There’s a deeper sense in the United States that we’ve lost a sense of the common good,” he said, “a sense that we’re in this together.”

His broader international experience and humanitarianism appeals well to many activists and has been helpful in inspiring many who work for Perriello. Jesse Gottschalk, now a senior at Swarthmore, worked for Perriello this summer, helping run an office in Bedford. Though Gottschalk is from Charlottesville, he found out about Perriello from a friend who went on a Darfur divestment lobbying trip and told him, “Jesse, I’ve met a guy who’s running for Congress in your district. You should get him elected.” I talked to Gottschalk in June, a month into his summer campaigning for Perriello, and he still seemed a bit awed by the candidate: “For a 33-year-old, it’s amazing how much the guy has done. He’s constantly impressing me.”

Going down Southside

Helping to resolve a civil war in Sierra Leone is impressive, but it can be hard to translate as a reason to elect a guy to Congress. When I first talked to Perriello last November, he didn’t talk about the issues of Southside in specific terms, but by the time I saw him in July, he had taken up Southside issues almost exclusively. Though he was renting a small place a few miles from his parents’ house* in Albemarle County, his time in Charlottesville was mostly limited to fundraising. In Southside, though, Perriello continued to have meetings geared to understanding the issues there.

At that point, to the shock of many observers, Perriello was winning the sign battle in Southside, outnumbering Goode’s 2 to 1 along Route 29, and he had the edge on Route 15. He had a fleet of young summer interns like Gottschalk knocking on doors and manning five offices throughout Southside—in Danville, Farmville, Bedford, Martinsville and Smith Mountain Lake. He was setting one up in Appomattox.

In late July, he was in the midst of what he called an economic REVIVAL listening tour, REVIVAL an acronym for the basic points of his jobs plan. The plan itself was a bit fuzzy—for instance, “E” is for Education and Job Training, and his platform stated “we must support our local teachers and help recruit and retain new ones”—but it showed a focus on the biggest issue that faces Southside.

The first stop of that July day was Mary’s Diner & Cafeteria, one of the more popular lunchtime places in Danville, with a high volume of customers flowing through its line for Southern-style cooking. Mary’s clientele was fairly evenly mixed racially, and old timers in particular seemed to love it. It’s the kind of place where people greet you, figuring the chances are better that they know you than that they don’t.

Perriello was supposed to be there for a “small business lunch,” but he was running late, so I grabbed a cup of coffee and talked with James Pleasants, a 75-year-old white man who was sitting alone. His career tells a story of Danville at large. He worked at Dan River Inc., a huge textile company that employed 14,000 in Danville at its height until the jobs gradually went overseas. Pleasants was eventually laid off, and took a job at the Disston tool plant until that closed, and then worked a series of other jobs until he took early retirement because of his knee.

We talked about prices for gas and food and the possibility of a recession. “Prices come up, but they never come down,” said Pleasants. Contrary to the stereotypes of working class whites, Pleasants said he’s interested in Obama and thinks he’s going to win. Part of Perriello’s immaculate timing is that he’s running in the same year as Obama and Warner: Obama’s campaign increases the pool of likely Democratic voters while Warner, a Democrat many Republicans are proud to support, has made numerous campaign stops in the Fifth District, giving Perriello the chance to associate himself with a brand that sells well in Southside.

Riding those coattails won’t take him to Washington, however. Pleasants, for instance, had never heard of Perriello, and he perked up when he misunderstood me and thought that Virgil Goode was coming to Mary’s Diner.

“Virgil’s coming here?” He was a bit disappointed when I explained. “I like Virgil,” Pleasants said, though he didn’t explain why.

Finally Perriello shows up, accompanied by his communications director, Jessica Barba, and a summer intern from Danville, Jonathan Shields, and almost immediately he throws himself into conversation with diner patrons as they enjoy their mashed potatoes and country-style steak.

Perriello talked with Donald Murphy, a 30-something white man in the construction business. Murphy was angry about the health care system—a friend of his is disabled and couldn’t get good coverage, paying $500 to $600 a month for health care.

“The U.S.A. is in pretty bad shape to be letting people suffer who are handicapped,” said Murphy. “You’ve got to look after your neighbor.”

To hear Goode talk, one would assume that the district is most concerned about closing the borders and kicking out immigrants legal and illegal. But as I toured Southside with and without Perriello, the major issues were economic—the desire for better jobs, lower gas prices and cheaper health care.

Perriello wore his usual candidate uniform—a clean, white collared shirt with a tie tucked into khaki pants and completed with a leather belt and worn cowboy boots that give a boost to his relatively small stature. I ask two middle aged black women, Tiffany Mitchell and Linda Hairston, how Perriello came across after they talked to him about utility prices, gas prices, and the particular bind that they place on the elderly. “He’s down to earth,” offers Mitchell.

After a few minutes of such chats, Perriello sat down to his “small business lunch.” It certainly was small. Not counting me and a reporter from the Danville Register & Bee, only three people showed up, a lawyer and two credit union workers—one of whom was Shields’ father.

Perriello proceeds with the event anyway, talking for 15 minutes with the three people, asking them about what they think of Danville’s economy and what should change.

“I was hoping you were going to tell me that,” says the attorney. He’s joking. Sort of.

It was a very different crowd from Mary’s later on at Bronx Boy Bagel, a somewhat more urbane establishment in downtown Danville. About 10 people sat around a table in an event room above the coffee and sandwich shop, a crowd of mostly white, middle-aged business people who wouldn’t be out of place in Charlottesville, and they had no problem listing the sometimes contradictory things that they wanted: a more vibrant downtown with restaurants and art galleries and parking; rail service that could allow for a commute to the closest big town, Greensboro, North Carolina; an improved school system where teachers would be safe; alternative sources of power; better job options to bring their children back after college; a stronger middle class, as opposed to the polarized society of Danville with its wealthy and its poor.

“Many of us believe that economic development in a place like Danville can be accomplished, at least in part, through historic preservation and downtown revitalization,” said Sarah Latham, marketing and research coordinator for the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History. “While it has received some attention, it’s safe to say that some of us feel like it hasn’t received enough attention here.”

Danville is a city that has weathered some rough times, but it’s showing signs of revitalization. Some old warehouses downtown are being converted into loft apartments. An Ikea supplier recently moved to Danville and retailers like Target and Lowes have opened stores there.

But it still has its problems. Unemployment is 8.1 percent in the Danville area, as compared to Charlottesville’s 4.1 percent. Nearby Martinsville has the state’s highest unemployment rate at 12.1 percent. Perriello repeated an anecdote that the business crowd seemed familiar with: Goodyear Tire, the area’s largest employer, had to go through 400 applicants before hiring 20 workers because of failed drug tests.

There is plenty of room for missteps in such a forum as this, but throughout the discussion, Perriello does a good job of validating the core of a person’s statement and connecting it to his own points—either his vision or his resume, such things that give him an opportunity to hit his talking points while also responding to what the other person is saying. I think most people see it as genuine.

Most of the people in attendance seem to be looking for a good excuse not to vote for Goode, and Tom has provided it—and may have even built up some loyal supporters who will go to bat for him in the conversations with other parents at after-school practices and during cocktail parties and at all the other places where votes are won and lost. Perriello even has Gary Bender, a vocal Republican who owns Dixie Bags and More, nodding along to what he is saying. Perriello seems to understand that to win in this district, he can’t demonize Republicans or their party.

“He’s an idealist,” Bender said of Perriello after the meeting. “And I’m impressed with that.” But Bender thought that Perriello would have to bow to the power of Nancy Pelosi to get any meaningful committee appointments, losing his integrity in the process. He was happy to stick with Goode. “Virgil’s one of the good guys.” With men like Bender, earning respect—and not a vote—would have to do for the challenger.

Perriello had an hour drive to his next event, speaking to union workers at Clover Yarn, one of Southside’s surviving textile plants. The 15 workers, all but one black, sat quietly at two long tables in a “wood”-paneled break room, having just finished their shift. They accepted the sodas proffered by Barba and Shields as Perriello went through his background, mentioning his grandfather, a union member, and explaining his “listening tour.”

Clover Yarn is about the only business left in Clover, a crossroads in Halifax County with dilapidated buildings on its main strip. It was incorporated for 103 years, but dissolved itself in 1998.

A woman asked about trade policy—certainly something on the minds of manufacturing workers. Perriello pointed to health care. “The countries we compete against, they’re not paying health care costs for their workers. We need to make sure that everyone has health care and those health care costs come down.” Perriello linked himself to Obama in this context, and while he stuck to the message that both parties are to blame, he called out the Bush administration in particular.

Whereas the downtown Danville crowd quickly started articulating their concerns, there were long pauses in between comments at Clover. Perriello indicated a middle-aged man and asked what’s on his mind.

“Just gas,” he said at first, and then moved into layoffs, and the decline in union members.

The concern over gas prices gave Perriello the chance to deliver one of his favorite lines: “I’d love to have a truck that gets 30 miles to the gallon instead of 13 miles to the gallon, but right now, the car companies, they make more money buying politicians instead of building me a better truck.” Perriello usually draws some reaction from the barb, but it fell flat that afternoon.

“He’s a good looking fellow,” said Alice Hunt, a Clover native getting ready to retire after 34 years. “He’s got youth on his side.”

Like one of them

That night in Danville, Perriello’s campaign held a party to celebrate the official grand opening of the Danville office. A steady stream of people, mostly African American, trickled in. The building is an attractive former furniture store notable to passers-by for its giant mural depicting the Old 97 trainwreck, which took place in Danville in 1903.

A jazz band played upstairs while folks chatted and milled about. It was a stifling summer evening, and the office was not air conditioned. Struggling to be heard over the saxophone, I asked Harry Brim, a retired Army man who is black, why he’s supporting Perriello.

Veteran health care issues are important to Brim, who complained about Goode’s votes: “Tom could be a very good influence on some of the things that’s going on in Congress as far as veterans go.”

“Most of all, he’s a faith-based man,” said Brim. Perriello had made appearances at churches in the area—an important way to get his name out. Perriello hasn’t been shy about his faith. He’s a Catholic who bows his head before he eats and doesn’t mind invoking “God.” It’s no coincidence that “REVIVAL” has religious connotations, and Perriello’s first radio ads were aired on Christian stations in the district. He’s drawn on the concept of tithing for his campaign, donating 10 percent of his staff’s hours to volunteer projects throughout the district.

I asked Brim what Perriello’s challenges will be. “Believe it or not, some people in Danville still think that the Confederate war is going on. The atmosphere in Danville is that racism is almost under the table, but it’s still there.”

Eventually, everyone congregates downstairs for Perriello to give a speech. The “Star Spangled Banner” is sung, and Tom is introduced by Vallena J. Greer, his regional campaign manager from Jackson, Mississippi.

“Regardless of Barack becoming the next president, if we don’t have the majority of the Congress voting for Barack, it’s not going to make a difference,” said Greer. “Barack Obama or no president can do anything unless they’ve got the majority of the votes from Congress to support them.” She derided Goode for voting against the $600 tax rebate, the new GI bill, and the children’s health care program known as S-CHIP. “Remember, we have to work harder for Tom because Tom’s name isn’t as known as Barack Obama and Warner.”

Perriello gave one of his typical stump speeches: “I will be spending the majority of my time focused on bringing jobs and economic relief to working families in Southside Virginia.” After 10 minutes, he culminated with one of his classic anecdotes. “I was meeting with a man in Pittsylvania County a couple of months ago. He had just finished his eight-hour shift at Wal-Mart, and he had 45 minutes off before he took another six-hour shift as a custodian. As I drove away from my conversation with him, I said, ‘Everyone else is out there is working that hard, I can make this pledge,’ and I make it today: Every day I’m in Congress, I will work a double shift for you to bring jobs and economic relief back to the Fifth District. I look forward to you all helping me work that double shift in Congress. Thank you!”

Applause broke out, and food was served. I tried to pin down people about Perriello’s chances and what he needs to do.

Maurice Dotson, a chemistry teacher, said he needs to throw events with free food and speak at more churches to get his name out there. “He seems to be a down to earth young man, and intelligent,” said Dotson. “He’s a listener, that’s the key.”

A recently elected Danville city councilor, Larry Campbell, Jr., complimented Perriello’s campaign, but said that he needed more exposure to the good ole boy network, and needed to make sure that the black vote comes out. Here’s a district fact that gets the attention of the Perriello campaign: It’s 24 percent African American by population but only 16 percent by voter turnout. Perriello’s fate may hinge on high turnout in Brunswick County, Halifax County, Pittsyvania County and Danville City.

Clad in a white suit and black tie, David Wilson, Jr. is a light-skinned black man who talked exuberantly about the possibility of the upcoming election. We had a long discussion about the desperation that has set into some parts of the community following the loss of stable jobs. Wilson is a gospel singer, and while we were talking, Perriello came up, humming the chorus of one of Wilson’s songs, “We Must Live in Unity.”

“It’s all about working together,” said Wilson. “That’s what I sense in the Perriello campaign. He’s a down in the trenches guy.”

I point out Perriello’s elite background —Yale, law school, work abroad.

“His personality is so warm—he’s like one of us. He can tell you all the stuff that he’s done and still sound like he’s one of us.”

“Project Goode”

Over the course of the summer, the Perriello campaign picked up steam as a race to watch, thanks in large part to the $921,000 that it raised by the end of June, compared to Goode’s $834,000. The campaign received official validation from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on August 1, when the race became one of 55 adopted nationally for the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” program, which meant extra funding and field workers. In 2006, the program provided an average of more than $400,000 for the races it supported.

“He just appears to be connecting with voters,” said DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) during a conference call with reporters. “The biggest challenge for Perriello is to continue to become better known. …By all indications, when he gets his message out, it will resonate.”

The DCCC’s appraisal of the race and commitment of support was a good sign, though the DCCC’s presence wasn’t always appreciated during the summer. Thinking it was doing the campaign a favor, it ran a radio spot in July that featured a Bush impersonator leaving a message for “Virgie” to thank him for supporting “the Big Oil Energy Agenda.” Even though the ad explicitly said, “Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee,” during door to doors, some Perriello field workers ran into anger about the ad, which people had read about in the local papers. Even some people on board with Perriello don’t like seeing Goode attacked.

Charlottesville blogger Waldo Jaquith has called Goode the “mayor” of the Fifth District, but in some ways he’s like the Fifth District’s uncle who gives decent presents but is a little crazy. Some in the Southside treat him as part of the family—you can make fun of your uncle, but you take offense when someone else does.

Still, to beat an incumbent, you have to convince people that he should lose his job to you. That’s not a hard sell in Charlottesville, where many see Goode as a xenophobic buffoon with a laughable accent and a taint of corruption. C-VILLE Weekly helped make him nationally infamous in December 2006 for his anti-immigrant stance when the paper published a letter sent to constituents that read, “The Muslim Representative from Minnesota [Keith Ellison] was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.”

Goode is now seen as part of the extreme wing of the Republican Party along with figures like Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter, but he hasn’t always been a Republican obsessed with immigrants at the expense of everything else. For 23 years, he was a state senator and a Democrat because “my daddy was a Democrat,” as he told The Washington Post in 1997. Yet even in the state legislature, he flirted with the Grand Ol’ Party—in 1995, he made some enemies in the General Assembly by breaking a 20-20 deadlock and giving power to the Republicans for the first time in decades. Goode was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 1996 but was forced to break with the party after he voted to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998. Because of that vote, the Fluvanna County Democrats wrote Goode, “We will support any viable Democratic candidate against you,” according to the Post. The Fifth District nominated another Democrat, J.W. Boyd, Jr. in 2000, forcing Goode to run as an Independent. Using redistricting as leverage, the GOP quickly brought Goode into its ranks.

He has long been known for his austere tastes. In Richmond, he thought the furniture too fancy and kept an oak stump for visitors. But he has had one close brush with major scandal, orchestrating a deal with MZM, Inc. that left the city of Martinsville on the line for $500,000.

MZM, Inc. opened a facility in Martinsville in 2003 with heavy assistance from Goode. The company, a defense contractor, promised it would quickly provide 150 new jobs, and city officials called it “Project Goode,” according to the Roanoke Times. But in the deal brokered by Goode, Martinsville signed a performance agreement that would make the city pay if the company did not create 75 jobs and meet an investment of at least $4.4 million.

Shortly after coming to Martinsville, MZM found itself in hot water. Company owner Mitchell Wade admitted to bribing California Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, as well as giving illegal campaign donations to Goode and Florida representative Katherine Harris. Neither Goode nor Harris were formally accused of wrongdoing. Martinsville manager Richard Berglund pleaded guilty to giving Goode illegal campaign donations, and Goode returned the funds. As the scandal unfolded in 2005, MZM sold the Martinsville branch to another company and the Defense Department terminated a contract with the facility in 2006. It was forced to shut down.

While in Martinsville, I called on an acquaintance who was happy to show me around—but he absolutely refused to talk about Goode on the record. The MZM scandal, he said, was rarely discussed.

Even Perriello doesn’t bring it up. “Those facts are there and I think people know them and if asked about them I talk about them, but it’s not one of the main things I bring up,” says Perriello.

In the instances where the campaign has tried to insinuate corruption, the efforts have largely fallen flat. One of their biggest media blitzes involved a Goode fundraiser, sponsored by lobbyists on September 11. The flier for the event prominently declared Goode’s position on the appropriations committee, and had a $500 minimum donation. The week prior to the event, the Perriello campaign went into full attack mode, calling him to the carpet for a fundraising event he was holding on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

“Only someone who has been in Washington for too long would find this acceptable,” wrote Barba. She went on in the release to try and link it to a pattern with Goode, calling this “pay to play” mentality a “hallmark of Goode’s career.”

But the attempt to make hay out of the event was mocked by the Danville Register & Bee’s editorial board. “Is it wrong for Goode to hold a fundraiser on 9/11?” asked the editorial rhetorically on September 10. “No, it’s not. …Questions about how candidates raise and spend money are certainly important, but Goode’s not doing anything wrong by holding a fundraiser this Thursday.”

For the most part, Perriello instead attacks Goode for his ineffectiveness. “Some people think he’s a great guy, some people think he’s a dirt bag, but I think what everyone now is understanding is that he’s ineffective,” Perriello says. “So whether you love him or whether you hate him, he’s not getting it done for the Fifth District.”

During the second debate in Danville, Perriello pointed to a ranking by the Congressional insider publication, Roll Call, that put Goode 60th out of 66 members of the appropriations committee. “The fact is, this is the bare minimum to expect for a member of Congress,” Perriello said. “We need someone who’s getting an A-plus on effectiveness, not a passing grade. This is nothing about Congressman Goode as a person, it’s just about who’s able to get things done.”

That argument can do the trick for those who’ve never gotten a favor from Goode. But there are an awful lot of the “influentials”—those community leaders whose opinions help direct many other voters—whose organizations have benefited from Goode’s earmarks and who will have a hard time letting go of a known like Goode for an unknown like Perriello. In Fiscal Year 2008 alone, Goode had $31.5 million worth of earmarks appropriated for Fifth District projects, according to Taxpayers For Common Sense. Those projects included the Appomattox Court House National Historic Park, the Danville Regional Airport, the Scottsville streetscape improvements, Piedmont Virginia Community College’s residential construction and renovations to South Hill’s historic theater—a little something for a lot of towns across the District.
 

Sticker shock

Debates don’t usually win many votes, but because they tend to draw out the partisan troops, they aren’t bad as a barometer of a campaign. Both debates to date have demonstrated the unusual amount of energy that the Perriello campaign has drummed up. The first, the Senior Statesman forum in Charlottesville, drew a standing room only crowd of 400 to the Senior Center on August 13. More than 300 people showed up to the second at the Institute of Advanced Learning and Research in Danville on September 3 to watch the pair go at it.

In both debates, and particularly during the second one, Perriello made his case that both parties in Washington were to blame, that he would prioritize bringing jobs to Southside, and that Goode wasn’t bringing home enough earmarks. For his part, Goode tried to paint Perriello as a tax-and-spend liberal clone of Nancy Pelosi, but saved his most passionate responses for the subject of immigration. At the first debate, he got carried away in a vivid description of a “three-tiered” border fence that he had proposed in Congress. During the second debate, he railed against the plague of “anchor babies”—the children of illegal immigrants who are citizens by virtue of their birth on U.S. soil.

“There’s not going to be a consensus in Congress to fix the anchor baby situation until you get more persons like me who are willing to say no to the anchor baby and no to the Nancy Pelosis of this Congress who depends on the Hispanic Caucus,” said Goode. He even claimed the immigration problem would have disappeared 10 years ago if a bill of his had passed.

Perriello parried: “Under a Republican-led Congress, your bill only generated 47 supporters. …Anyone who wants to vote on this issue should be well aware that there’s exactly zero chance of motion on any sort of bill to this effect.

“You can’t confuse the things we can get done with the things that we can’t get done,” said Perriello. “That’s exactly why you’re not getting anything done on Capitol Hill.”

Perriello’s campaign manager, Lise Clavel, was jubilant after the debate. Perriello had combined a critique of Goode’s ineffectiveness with a vision of his own policies and insight into the issues that was hard to refute. Clavel had seen one woman get up during the debate, rip off her Goode sticker, and grab a Perriello sticker to take its place.

One voter, one mind changed to Perriello. Only tens of thousands to go.

Goode denied Perriello a major opportunity for exposure by canceling a debate scheduled for October 7 that would have been televised live by NBC29 and ABC13 in Lynchburg at 7pm before the second presidential debate. Six days before, Goode cited a scheduling conflict because of a fundraiser, blaming it on his campaign manager and NBC29, even though the debate had been discussed since April. Goode said he would commit to one more debate, but by press time he hadn’t agreed to a televised one. Which means that Perriello will have to work that much harder to persuade voters.
 

Ad about you

Perriello was the first candidate to hit the airways with TV ads. To get his name out there, those first ads explained his background, his tithing campaign, and playfully made fun of his difficult name.

The most superficial but nonetheless significant issue that Perriello has is his name. He sometimes takes the time to explain how it’s pronounced at meetings: “It’s like Admiral Perry and the color yellow, Perry-yellow.” During the Danville debate, even Goode doesn’t quite get it right, pronouncing the first part “peer” instead of “pear.” For his first TV ads, the campaign mocked his difficult moniker by having a litany of Southside residents proclaim their support for Perriello while mispronouncing his name, ending with Perriello delivering the zinger, “How you pronounce my name isn’t important. Knowing what it stands for is.” The next ad was a feel-good introduction that featured his tithing initiative. Its last shot proclaims “Service. Faith. Results.”

The Perriello campaign had better hope that those ads helped define him—last week, Goode started using TV ads to create very different connotations for the  name “Perriello.”

Goode’s ad features a black and white distorted image of Perriello with a beard (which he doesn’t currently sport) to go with voice-overs about his “liberal” policies. The version playing in the Lynchburg and Roanoke markets calls the Albemarle native a “New York lawyer” with “liberal New York policies” who opposes drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the so-called marriage amendment, while supporting comprehensive immigration reform. The Perriello campaign called on TV stations to pull the “libelous” ad because it mischaracterized his position on drilling (he supports offshore drilling, though not in ANWR). NBC29 responded that it couldn’t legally censor political advertisements.

Perriello’s campaign countered a day later with its first ad directly challenging Goode. Drawing on bailout and gas price anxieties, Perriello stands in front of a NASCAR-like vehicle with stickers for companies including ExxonMobil, Texaco, Chevron, Capital One, Wachovia and JP Morgan.

“This is what Congressman Goode’s car would look like if he drove in NASCAR,” says Perriello as he rips off the ads. “Corporate sponsorship may work for NASCAR, but not Congress.”

Goode’s negative ads are a sign that he is feeling threatened, but they’ll probably work in some circles, causing some voters—particularly in Southside—to question Perriello just enough to not cast their ballots for him on November 4. This is the point in the campaign where things could start getting nasty. With Congress adjourned, Goode can start campaigning full-time in the district. And no doubt he will start calling in whatever favors he has accrued over 12 years as a congressman and 23 years as a state senator. Considering the money that Goode has in the bank, you will be seeing a lot more advertisements that attack Perriello.
 

“We’re not worried”

For all that the Perriello campaign has done, this final month presents a significant uphill climb. None of the national pundits are picking him. The forecasting machine Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball still puts this race as “likely Republican,” and NPR doesn’t include the race in its “key races.”

As of press time, only one poll has been published on the Perriello-Goode race. In mid-August, SurveyUSA announced that its polling revealed Goode with a sizeable advantage—64 percent of respondents said they would vote for Goode if the election were held today.

“It’s basically a name recognition contest at this point, and of course Goode wins on that alone,” said Barba at the time. “Any unknown challenger against an incumbent would appear this way in August. We’re not worried. We’ll turn it around.”

The Benenson Strategy Group in D.C. conducted internal polling for the campaign that compared February responses by likely voters in the Fifth District to July responses. Over those five months, Goode’s job approval rating changed 10 points, with 49 percent holding “excellent” or “good” views and 43 percent holding “fair” or “poor” views. In its July polling, it found that voters initially said they would vote for Goode 56 to 31. But after the survey takers read positive statements about Perriello, the margin was reduced to 43-40.

It’s another sign of progress, but it’s hardly a home run. When voters go to the ballot box, no one will be there to whisper sweet statements about Perriello. Much the opposite: Goode’s fundraising has picked up enough that he’s likely to be ahead of Perriello’s total amount raised when new figures are released October 15.

The best signs for Perriello come from registration numbers. Just under 50,000 new people have registered to vote in the Fifth District since the 2006 election, more than half of them since January. Not all of them will vote for Perriello, but in all likelihood, more of them will vote for him than will vote for Goode.

Yet what happens if Perriello comes up short—he brings the race to within 10 points, but still loses? He has built up an awful lot of hope—a lot of hope that was latent before he and Barack Obama brought it out in places like inner city Danville.

After the Danville debate, the gospel singer David Walker, Jr. was upbeat about Perriello’s campaign. “We have an opportunity now to put Mr. Tom Perriello in this office,” said Walker. “He didn’t favor one particular group. He was talking about all of us, working on issues that will improve the lives of people—not just Southside, but working to improve the lives of people throughout this nation.”

A radiant Perriello came up and, once again, hummed the chorus of “We Must Live in Unity.” Walker turned to him. “You did a superb job, sir. I want to tell you that personally. I look at you and I see someone who really has a hands-on grasp of the issues, not the fear mongering, not the social issues that they want to throw in there, but a broad-based grasp of the issues. People are hurting.”

“You get all that?” Perriello asked me.

As Perriello walked away, I asked Walker how the race was going in Danville. Goode signs now outnumbered Perriello’s along Route 29—it was starting to look like the incumbent was at last engaging his network.

“I think he’s throwing in everything but the kitchen sink,” said Walker. “And if he doesn’t win this time, he’ll run again.”

That might be what it takes to beat Virgil Goode. Al Weed narrowed the gap by nine points the second time he ran. Perhaps voters will give Goode a probational pass this time around, but be ready to yank him for Perriello if he doesn’t do more to be a meaningful representative of the Fifth District.

But will Perriello stick around and run again? I asked Perriello last week.

“We’re obviously very focused on winning this time,” said Perriello, saying what I figured he’d say—the smart thing to say, but still the thing the politician says. “The Fifth District can’t afford another two years of being represented by someone who’s not taken very seriously in Washington.”

But then Perriello addressed the question more directly. “So far, this has been a really rewarding experience. People have impressed me with how decent they are, how smart they are, and I feel that we’ve been able to run a very different kind of campaign with a lot of integrity. If I still feel that way when all this is done, it’s something that I think I’ll want to stick with. If I don’t, I’ll make the decision about where I can most make a difference for our community.”

And then it’s back to being the recklessly hopeful candidate he has to be to stand any chance at all of beating Virgil Goode: “But in the moment, we’re focused on winning. And we’ve got a great chance to do that.”

*Corrected October 7, 2008: The story originally stated that Tom Perriello was living with his parents in Albemarle. He, in fact, rents a small place a few miles away from them. [return]