5th District race too close to call

The race for the 5th District congressional seat was too close to call Tuesday night.

UPDATE: At 11:51 p.m. CNN showed that all counties had reported except Flauvanna and Bedford. Periello has been maintaining lead with a few hundred votes for the past few hours.

At 11 p.m., Democratic challenger Tom Perriello held a 500-point lead in unofficial vote tallies over incumbent Virgil Goode with six precincts in the district left to report.

In Danville alone, there were still 2,700 absentee ballots to be counted.

The race took a couple of twists throughout the evening as the results were announced. At 9:15 p.m., the Associated Press called the race for Goode, despite the fact that Perriello was winning at that time by about 2,300 votes, according to results posted by the Virginia State Board of Elections. Mecklenburg County had yet to report any precincts and Franklin County still had a few to go.

At 9:58 p.m. the Perriello campaign sent out a statement, refusing to concede.

To nobody’s surprise, Franklin County gave a resounding stamp of approval to Goode, a Rocky Mount Republican. Mecklenburg County results, however, started to trickle in showing a fairly even split of votes.

The Associated Press, at about 10:15 p.m., announced it would re-examine the numbers. Minutes later, it withdrew its call for Goode, saying the race was too close to call and it would wait for all votes to be counted.

Goode, a six-term incumbent congressman, has served the 5th District since he was elected as a Democrat in 1996. He had a brief stint as an independent and is now a Republican.

In office, Goode was instrumental in the tobacco buyout bill around 2000. With a seat on the Appropriations Committee, Goode has earmarked millions of federal dollars for development projects in Southside.

He speaks forcefully against illegal immigration and rights for homosexuals and is a strong advocate of the Second Amendment.

Perriello, an Albemarle County native, recently returned to the 5th District after serving as a national security consultant in Afghanistan and a war crimes prosecutor against criminals in Sierra Leone and Liberia. He also has founded faith-based organizations.

Perriello focused his campaign on job creation and economic revival in Southside. He emphasized the need for small business development and converting Southside farmland into alternative energy resources. Perriello also talked about lowering the cost of health care and making it accessible to more people.

In the last few weeks before the election, campaigning got nasty, with both sides crying foul play.

Goode ran a number of television ads attacking Perriello that were deemed false, including saying Perriello opposed offshore drilling, supported gay marriage and was a “New York lawyer.”

Goode challenged Perriello’s ad that said he received the highest rating from the National Rifle Association, when in fact he received the highest rating a candidate can have without ever having voted on the Second Amendment.

Contact Sarah Arkin at sarkin@registerbee.com or (434) 791-7983.