Virginia’s 5th district has been a Republican stronghold for 15 years. Next week, however, voters frustrated with MAGA and its broken promises may change direction. Tom Perriello, Democratic candidate for VA-05, held this seat from 2009-2011 and is running to get it back.
Perriello sits down with Tim to talk about how he will protect rural Virginians while fighting corruption and monopolies in Washington. They also discuss the Valley Link Transmission Line’s unfair costs on Virginians, and how Perriello is reaching out to Gen Z voters in Charlottesville.
Tom Perriello is the Democratic nominee for Virginia’s fifth district. He previously served VA-05 in Congress from 2009-2011.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Tim Dickinson
Hey, this is Tim Dickinson for The Contrarian. Our guest today is Tom Perriello, is a former congressperson from Virginia, running again for his former seat. Tom, welcome!
Tom Perriello
Thank you for having me.
Tim Dickinson
Well, tell us, just to orient us a bit, just what’s Virginia’s Fifth all about?
Tom Perriello
It’s a huge swath of Central and Southside Virginia. It’s about 24 counties. Geographically, it’s the same size as the whole state of New Jersey. It goes from Charlottesville through Lynchburg down to Danville. When I held it before, we called it a July 4th popsicle, because it was blue on top with Charlottesville, then red in the middle with Liberty University, and then white-hot hatred for both parties in the factory towns, in the southern part of the district that felt sold out by both parties. Now it goes a little bit further east towards Goochland and Louisa, but it’s got everything. Very rural, but a mix.
Tim Dickinson
Yeah, right. So, tell us about what… I mean, this is a seat that is traditionally thought of as quite red. You’ve won it once before. What is the opportunity that you see now?
Tom Perriello
Well, Trump won it by 12 points, and we’re ahead internally by 1 point, already, and early vote numbers, we’ve shattered every record, on early votes. And, not surprisingly, people are incredibly upset about the price of everything, and they’re upset that this was not a natural disaster driving this. This was a decision by folks in Washington, like Donald Trump and like John McGuire, and… But I think, as you know, it’s not enough just for people to be angry at Washington. They have to also feel like there’s an alternative, that they can trust. And we’ve done over 600 listening sessions, we’ve shown up in every single precinct, talking to people, listening to people, about what a common sense alternative would be, and that’s why we’ve been able to capture that momentum and pull ahead. Ever so slightly in Virginia’s 5th District.
Tim Dickinson
Now, and you’ve been talking about your adrenaline and your caffeine and these listening sessions. What comes through to you? What are people most concerned about as you’re talking to citizens in your district?
Tom Perriello
People can’t make it paycheck to paycheck. I mean, just a couple weeks ago, we did something called 24 Hours of Tom, where I campaigned for 24 straight hours without sleep, and the reason was because I’ve heard from so many people that they’re having to work a double shift, or even a third job, just to make it to the next paycheck. I wanted them to feel like they had a congressperson who was going to work as hard for them in Washington as they work for their families. But we also, in those 24 hours, did events in each of the 24 counties and municipalities of the district, because I wanted to make sure people felt like I was fighting for them regardless of whether they were in a blue county or a red county. And I want people’s gas prices to go down, whether they vote for me or not. I want people’s healthcare prices to… costs to go down, whether they’re in a blue county or a red county. And I think that’s part of a response to listening day after day and week after week, to people feeling like the folks in Washington care more about how to score points against the other side, instead of how to actually help everyday folks, you know, get through. So, we’ve built a different kind of brand, a different kind of relationship to the voters. I think that’s really paying off here in crunch time with folks who just want some change, but also folks who just would not have been comfortable before voting for a Democrat, seeing in the Perriello campaign folks that are focused on what they’re focused on, getting prices down, ending this war, ending the corruption, and making sure the powerful have to play by the same rules as everyone else.
Tim Dickinson
Well, tell us about… contrast yourself a bit with your opponent here, Congressman McGuire.
Tom Perriello
Well, John McGuire has not done any public town halls, he’s refused to do any public debates with us. And I think he’s forgotten that a congressperson’s job is to work for the people, not to work for the president. In fact, on the date of what was supposed to be our first debate, he ended up being in Dallas, paying $25,000 for the right to cheer for the president. And the 5th District of Virginia was first represented by a guy named James Madison. And Madison, you know, came up with a system of checks and balances that was based on the idea of Congress as a co-equal branch. And I think that’s really what I’m hearing from folks, is that, as angry as they may be at Donald Trump, they blame Congress even more, because it’s supposed to be Congress that is responsive to the people, and someone like John McGuire, who seems to care more about whether he can show his face at Mar-a-Lago than whether he can show his face in the district, is really where the system has broken down. And the fact that he takes so much dark money from corporate groups like Dominion, and people know I’ve never taken any money from lobbyists or corporate PACs. That’s how you end up with something where McGuire feels so out of touch to people, whether that was, being, parroting the talking points on the ValleyLink transmission line and some of the data centers, or whether that’s been this just vicious attack on rural healthcare. Because for people here, you know, it’s a matter of their families. People cannot afford to start a family. We have 11 of our 24 counties without a practicing OBGYN. We’ve lost the labor and delivery units in Farmville and South Boston, one of the options in Lynchburg. When people are having to make a decision to put off starting a family because of what John McGuire’s doing, that starts to trump whatever, you know, party affiliation they have. And unfortunately, our politics in Washington has gotten so bad that it really is hitting at the kitchen table at that level.
Tim Dickinson
We’ve touched on gas prices, we’ve touched on healthcare affordability. You mentioned, sort of, in passing, data centers and this transmission line. Tell us a bit about that, because that sounds like an interesting local issue.
Tom Perriello
Well, we have something called the Valley Link Transmission Line that’s been proposed through 9 of our rural counties, and it’s even worse than the data centers because they’re using the power of eminent domain, I believe illegally, because it is for private profit. So, it’s a transmission line to feed the data centers in Northern Virginia. And the farmers and other residents of our rural counties won’t even have the right to access those transmission lines, whether that would be to draw from them or to sell something like clean energy back to those lines. But they get all of the pain in the community. They don’t get any of the revenue that you might be able to negotiate for a data center, and this is all based on the corruption of the monopolies here in Virginia. Yeah. And a lot of these same rural counties know me because I helped them fight a gas line a few years ago that they also did not want breaking through their farmland. And because I don’t take any money from lobbyists or corporate PACs, that includes not taking money from Dominion, which is the largest contributor to both political parties in Virginia, Republicans and Democrats. So, when I ran for governor a few years ago, I really broke the mold on refusing that money and helping these rural communities, you know, stand up to this. And I’ll tell you, when you show up for people in the fights that matter to them most. and you start to have that broader conversation, not just about the transmission line, but then more conversations about these flock cameras, about right to repair, other things that are limiting people’s freedoms, and then you expand into a conversation about abuses by ICE, you’re having a very different conversation and coalition than if you’re showing up and starting with an issue that may not be the forefront of their mind. So I actually think there’s a lot more common ground here right now in terms of the fears of people right, left, and center, about the erosion of our privacy, about the abuse of some of these monopolies, about the direction AI may be going. But the showing up and the listening is really, really important to that, and being present for people on the fights that matter most to them in their local community. So the fact that I’m not waiting to get to Washington to be part of that fight, I’m showing up at the community centers, I’m reaching out and putting pressure on local and state officials, that matters to people in a way that allows them to be part of this broader coalition for common sense. to try to restore that respect for the Constitution, at the same time, we’re trying to bring these costs down that are just completely out of control.
Tim Dickinson
We’re in an interesting moment, where a lot of economic activity is tied to data centers. transmission lines, and then also new technologies that people are really kind of uncomfortable with, whether that’s, you know, these flock cameras. And so, I feel like there’s a… I can’t remember a moment where people have been sort of, new issues have emerged that don’t seem to have a partisan tilt to them, right? People are just like, why are we being surveilled by these license plate readers? But what are we building all these data centers for? Why should this be in my backyard? How are we going to power this? Why am I paying more for electricity to make this happen? Does that present a new opportunity for people once they get to Congress to… for Democrats in particular, to take leadership on these kinds of issues and channel that discontent and help Change it.
Tom Perriello
You really hit the nail on the head. I think this is a tremendous opportunity, frankly, for either party, to take some of these issues where the voters are way far ahead of the parties. You know, when I launched a year ago, I made a promise not to bring up AI for the first few months, because I needed to earn the right and trust to talk about that by discussing gas and groceries and childcare every day, which I also care about passionately. It was a good plan, but the first day, I had at least a dozen people bring up AI to me in everyday sense. Voters are way ahead of the parties, both because both parties are scared of the big tech money, but also because, you know, the chattering class is treating this as something new and a shiny object, and voters see it more as an accelerant of dynamics they’ve already been dealing with. And that the parties haven’t fully adjusted to, whether that’s more difficulty for parents to be raising kids away from screens, or the dopamine addiction, whether it’s the automation of jobs continuing to accelerate, whether it’s some of these privacy and civil liberty issues. So when I see that, I think there’s a huge opportunity here, because it’s not coded yet as red or blue fully. Now, I do think the federal preemption vote is going to end up being very similar to what the NAFTA vote was in the 90s. So if you go back to that, and you say globalization was happening, people talk about NAFTA, but really, NAFTA was the litmus test for where Elites in both parties stood on globalization at that time, and the… the news… the pundits sometimes treated it as, like, oh, are you for globalization or against globalization? That wasn’t the question. Globalization was going to happen. The question was whether Washington was going to help factory towns and communities make that transition in the face of globalization, or whether they were going to pour fuel on the fire. And NAFTA was the fuel on the fire. With AI, it’s similar. Artificial intelligence is going to happen. It’s not the question of being for it or against it. The question is whether the political parties are going to use their powers in Washington to help all of us make the transition into this AI future, or they’re gonna pour fuel on the fire that destroys so many American jobs, and potentially so many American lives, if not humanity itself. So federal preemption was this vote like NAFTA, where John McGuire, along with Donald Trump, was pushing for this carte blanche for the tech oligarchs to have no liability, no regulations, and no guardrails. That’s the bad news. The good news was it was blocked in the Senate on a bipartisan basis, and it was partly a reaction to both red states like Texas and blue states like New York trying to put some regulations and liability in place. So I think the voters really are ready for this conversation. We’ve made it very central in our campaign, and I think they’re ready for a conversation that’s much more substantive and nuanced than this question of, like, are you just for or against a technology? The question is, what do we want it to be doing and enabling, and what do we want it to not be allowed to do? And I think that’s not that difficult of a conversation to have if we get Some new leaders up there who aren’t afraid to have these conversations, and aren’t in the pockets, quite frankly, of the big tech lobbyists.
Tim Dickinson
I wanted to move the conversation to the ACA, and your exit from Congress was in some ways linked to a tough vote that you took in support of that legislation, which is, again, under assault, and I wonder how that’s playing in this race.
Tom Perriello
I mean, healthcare is a top three issue every single day. Unfortunately, it’s a life-or-death issue for so many people. We see multiple hospitals threatened with closure in the next year. There was a woman in one of our rural counties whose mother had a heart attack recently, and she got to the hospital and she was fine, but the paramedics said a year from now, if that hospital was closed, her mom would have almost certainly died on the way to Richmond. So we have a situation where the Republicans are saying that people’s zip code could be a death sentence for them in terms of healthcare access. I was proud to vote for the Affordable Care Act. Knowing at the time, that it would probably take a while for people to be able to see why it was good for them. Many years later, people in rural communities understand the Affordable Care Act was a lifeline, particularly once Virginia took the Medicaid expansion. I had the benefit of not taking money, again, from corporate lobbyists in the insurance industry that was trying to threaten me into being a no vote. So now, I think it’s not just that people understand I’m fighting for healthcare and health services, particularly in our rural communities It’s also that they now say, hey, this is someone who we can trust when he says. that this is something that’s going to pay off over time. That was true of some of the investments we made in infrastructure, like the Robertson Bridge in Danville, that have really helped to create some economic recovery in this former factory town. And those aren’t things that you can fake overnight. Those are the things that are the tough work over a period of time. And I think that’s where John McGuire’s failed, is not just being part of January 6th, and voting to gut rural healthcare, but not showing up and listening to what it is the community’s gonna need over time. So I think the Affordable Care Act has been important to people in and of itself. But I think it’s also a litmus test in this era where people correctly think there’s a lot of corruption in both parties, and want to see people who’ve been willing to stand up to those powerful interests, and people feel that about the vote I took for the Affordable Care Act.
Tim Dickinson
You obviously have a lot of college students in your district, college-age people. How are you reaching out to Gen Z?
Tom Perriello
People are fired up. I mean, they understand that they’re inheriting this mess that Trump and the folks in Washington are creating. Here in my hometown of Charlottesville, we’ve had over 3,000 students register at the University of Virginia, and it’s really no shortcuts. We’ve done runs, you know, literally runs in the morning with the running clubs. We’ve met with the student associations across the board. I’ve gone and spoke into classes, and we started that work early so that people don’t just see us showing up at election time. And we’ve shown up on other campuses, from Longwood University to Averitt and everything in between. So young people, I think, do want to see that, and it goes back to this recurring theme about corruption. For young people, they want to see somebody who’s not taking money from Lobbyists and corporate interests who are standing up for the people. And I think young people understand right now that, this election, this midterm election, is probably not about getting everything that they want and deserve. It’s about preventing things from getting worse and beginning the process of teeing up a 2028 election that I think could be the first really impactful Gen Z election.
Tim Dickinson
Well, Tom, I’m conscious of your time. Thank you so much for joining us. How can people learn more about your campaign and get in touch?
Tom Perriello
Just tomperiello.com, we would love for folks to get involved. For those in the DMV area, we still want canvassers. It’s beautiful, the leaves have changed. come down, spend some time in the shadow of the Blue Ridge with us. Donate online if you can. Follow along at home. But TomPerriello.com is the best way to do it, and thanks to everyone out there. The path back to national sanity runs through Virginia’s 5th District. We’ve taken a Trump plus 12 district and put it in play, pulling ahead by one, but this is going to be one of those very narrow races that everyone’s watching on election night. And we hope you’ll do your part to help get us across the finish line.
Tim Dickinson
Alright, we’ll be looking at you as a bellwether, Tom, thank you so much, and we’ll see you back here on The Contrarian.
Tom Perriello
Thank you, Tim.
Tim Dickinson
Bye, take care.
