Rep. Perriello reflects on first year

Rep. Tom Perriello supported the stimulus bill, which brought a significant amount of funding to Danville and Pittsylvania County in 2009. Here’s a look at some of what Perriello brought to the southern end of the 5th District.

Danville

34 appearances January-November 2009

- $9.7 million for K-12 schools

- $189,738 for health clinics

- $1.2 million (shared among multiple localities) in home weatherization upgrades

- $202,200 for energy efficiency grants

- $222,432 for law enforcement

- $283,823 for community development grants

- $1.5 million for affordable housing

- $28.9 million for the Robertson Bridge replacement project

- $200,000 for Danville Transit System

- $1.37 (shared among multiple localities) for youth employment

- $102,205 for Head Start programs

- $200,000 for Advanced Battery Manufacturing

- $200,000 for Institute for Advanced Learning and Research

- $100,000 for Danville Community College

Pittsylvania County

15 appearances March-November 2009

- $10.9 million for K-12 schools

- $1.2 million (shared among multiple localities) in home weatherization upgrades

- $112,804 for law enforcement

- $6.47 million for bridge repair

- $1.37 million (shared among multiple localities) for youth employment

- $124,263 for Head Start programs

- $502,000 for the Institute for Sustainable and Renewable Resources

“The campaign. Always the campaign,” Rep. Tom Perriello said, sighing — eager to return to a recent discussion of his legislative work, rather than his November re-election.

Perriello, a Democrat from Albemarle County, beat longtime incumbent Republican Virgil Goode, of Franklin County, in November 2008 by 727 votes. In that same election, GOP presidential candidate John McCain also won the traditionally conservative 5th District.

Perriello’s win over Goode was the closest in the country and come this year’s midterm election, the country will watch what happens in the newly-named “political bellwether” that the 5th District has become.

With no fewer than eight candidates hoping to unseat him and a prominent Tea Party movement in the district protesting his every vote, Perriello may prefer to talk legislation, but everyone else is talking about how things might unfold — and what that will mean for Perriello, for the 5th, for the president and, perhaps, for the national political atmosphere.

His votes in favor of the stimulus bill, cap-and-trade and health care reform have earned Perriello the title of one of the most-targeted freshman Democrats in the country from political analysts. But he doesn’t see it that way.

“I’m not sure that I am (vulnerable),” he said during an interview with the Register & Bee earlier this month. “I actually like my chances a lot. Considering I had a 10 percent chance last time, I probably have better than a 50 percent chance this time.”

In his first year, Perriello voted with his party on those three prominent bills, but he also voted against President Barack Obama’s first budget and in favor of the Stupak Amendment to the health care reform legislation prohibiting federal funding for abortions, earning him criticism from hard left-wingers.

Perriello isn’t afraid to voice his disappointment with Washington.

“It’s been a year for me of probably some disillusionment at the broader level and some inspiration at the local level,” he said. “I don’t think we saw the transformation we probably hoped for with this administration. Some of it is the way they’ve governed and some is the situation they walked into.”

He criticized the Republicans for opposing the stimulus bill, which he said “probably prevented a depression,” although he thought its infrastructure component could have been bigger. But at the same time, he criticized his own party as well.

“I have several major disappointments,” he said. “I think the Democratic Party screwed up a lot in Washington, but it was very clear the Republicans were directed not to work with us in any way. I understand it’s a nasty place; it’s a political place. I’ve got thick skin. But when your country’s on the verge of depression, that’s not the time to say ‘Let’s tee up in 2010.’ It’s time to come together.”

Despite setbacks and strong opposition, Perriello has a long list of accomplishments he touts — including introducing bills to increase veterans’ benefits and provide tax credits for higher education; writing an amendment to a student aid bill to address disparities in early childhood education in rural areas and voting against FDA regulation of tobacco products that would further regulate local farmers.

Perriello spent more than 100 hours during the August recess at 21 town halls throughout the district listening to constituents, most of whom were less than unhappy with his vote for health care reform. And despite his other accomplishments, it is that vote that will resonate most with voters, said Isaac Wood of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. Wood serves as the House of Representatives race editor for political analyst Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball newsletter.

“When people look back, people will remember the health care vote,” Wood said. “In some people’s mind, whatever else you do is unimportant. It’s just that one vote that will define him.”

Perriello’s liberal votes may make him vulnerable in a conservative district, but Wood also argues that the work Perriello has put into spending time in the district will go a long way.

“Those personal relationships,” Wood said, “they really do trump TV advertising and a political campaign … I think it’s gonna be very interesting to see how he hasn’t run away from what he said he was gonna do. He made it very clear that he was gonna vote on his convictions. Many politicians say that, but he’s followed through.”

Perriello has four offices in the district and said he works “pretty much every day of the week.”

“Tell me anything I can do,” he said. “If you want me to go camp out in the community, I’ll do it … I spent quite a lot of time with people we will never agree with.”

But 5th District GOP Committee Chairman Tucker Watkins criticized Perriello for his constituent services, among other things.

“The constituent services job is just not being done very well and that’s a shame,” Watkins said. “…A lot of it’s experience and knowing who to call at the agencies.”

However, Perriello confirmed that his staff did not inherit any of the open constituent services files from Goode’s staff and “did stumble a little bit out of the gate.”

“The tradition has been that you make the effort to hand over those files,” Perriello said of what others in Washington told him. “I think it was an unexpected loss and the people in that office did not expect to make that transition.”

Watkins acknowledged the effort Perriello made in organizing the town hall meetings. But ultimately, he said Perriello did not listen to his constituents on health care reform. Leading up to his vote, Perriello told the public he was a “no” on the bill but hoping to get to a “yes.” Watkins said that was “just his way to get through the meetings.”

“I give him a hands up for doing 21 town hall meetings,” Watkins said. “The only problem is he had earplugs in. Or he must have. He voted against the wishes of the constituents. Ms. (Nancy) Pelosi told him how to vote and that’s what he did.”

Since Goode announced this summer he would not seek the Republican nomination to challenge Perriello — he has remained ambiguous about running as a third-party candidate, though — a small army of candidates have organized campaigns to reclaim the district for the party it was drawn for.

“I think it’s a crying shame for the district that we lost a wonderful public servant in Virgil Goode who understood the district,” Watkins said, “and end up with a guy who, rather than being a citizen of the district, is a citizen of Washington, D.C.”

The growing Tea Party movement has played a large role in organizing grassroots opposition to Perriello, with Nigel Coleman leading the group in Danville. Coleman considered burning Perriello in effigy in November but quickly cancelled that event because of intense criticism.

“I never meant anything malicious,” Coleman said in an interview earlier this month. “I’ve met Tom Perriello a couple times. Nice guy, very smart. Definitely a person that likes to, or enjoys in some way, speaking to the people — and that’s important in a politician. But he’s a politician.”

Perriello acknowledged that the Tea Party concerns regarding fiscal responsibility are valid ones. He said he voted against Obama’s budget because he thought it was fiscally irresponsible.

“I really understand where a lot of the anger and sentiment comes from,” Perriello said. “Spending away our future … and the blurring of the line between the public and private sector. I do think capitalism is under real threat.”

But while the Tea Party promotes smaller government and is critical of the government taking over the private sector, Perriello sees the reverse — the private sector taking over government.

When the banking meltdown happened, “Wall Street came to Washington and said, ‘you have to bail us out,’” he said. This month, Perriello voted against releasing the second half of the $350 billion bailout for the financial industry and instead voted for a set of reforms for the bailout. He also supports auditing the Federal reserve — a “black box of money” — and creating a commission to oversee government stimulus spending.

But despite the strong criticism from the Tea Party and other Republicans, Perriello maintains strong support from Democrats in the 5th District.

“I’ve never seen anyone work any harder to try to better the life of the people in the 5th District than Tom Perriello,” said Fred Hudson, chairman of the 5th District Democrats. “… He’s the kind of representative I know I’m proud of and I can’t understand why they are so adamantly opposed.

“(The 2010 election) is gonna certainly spawn people who think they can unseat him. People tend to challenge hardest an incumbent on his or her first re-election.”

And challenging hard they are, with seven candidates — and counting — running in the June 8 GOP primary. Grassroots support is growing for Tea Party candidates, but whether any of them can raise the money to compete with Perriello is uncertain. Two candidates have heavily self-funded their campaigns, but Perriello’s campaign announced Friday it has more than $1 million on hand.

“Some (of the opposition) have a lot of money, some have name recognition,” Wood said. “And we’ll see who has enough of a combination of the two to take him down … (The question is) whether the Tea Party movement can bring money along with it. You do need money to run a campaign.”

No matter what happens, Perriello stands by the votes he cast and the accomplishments he made during his first year in office.

“I wasn’t doing that because I thought it was gonna peak by the following November,” he said. “I did it because it was the right thing to do.”

Bradley Rees, a Bedford County conservative blogger, radio host and former congressional candidate, disagrees with Perriello’s beliefs — but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t respect him.

“Tom Perriello is a man of principle,” Rees said. “He will come out and state his principles on any given agenda item and you can expect him to vote that way … I admire his principles. I admire his stance on what he believes. I just happen to not believe the same thing.

“He is vulnerable because he has a ‘D’ after his name, frankly. There’s a lot of anti-Democrat sentiment. The letters after the name shouldn’t be the important thing. We should focus on their principles.”