Can Tom Perriello Win Back His Old Seat, 18 Years Later?

POWHATAN, VIRGINIA – In a classroom-sized space at the Powhatan Public Library, a dozen or so of incumbent Rep. John McGuire’s (R-VA) constituents let out cheers and applause when Tom Perriello walked into the room on Monday evening. The Democratic congressional candidate for Virginia’s Fifth District circled the room, shaking hands and bantering with those who had gathered for his AI data center town hall. It was one of several Perriello has hosted across the district in recent weeks, and that doesn’t include his many other public engagements, such as the 26-hour stint of straight campaigning he did earlier this month, canvasses Perriello has co-led with young voters, and Sunday’s “Souls to the Polls” rally on the first day of in-person early voting. 

“Now I am 15 days out from an election, and so you would think I’d be out knocking doors tonight trying to get every last vote,” Perriello said Monday. “But I think it’s important not just to win, but to win in a way that’s starting to build the kind of coalition and conversation that will meet this moment.”

Powhatan County was one of six counties incorporated into the district after the Supreme Court of Virginia approved new congressional maps in 2021. At the time, political scholars observed those maps, which were in place for the midterm elections the following year, still favored Republicans, though not by much. That makes the fifth district a fairly Trumpy one. Perriello’s recent stop at the Powhatan Public Library speaks volumes about his campaign’s strategy. 

“If you’re asking someone to jump out of an airplane, it’s a lot easier if you give them a parachute first,” he told the Prospect. “If we’re asking people to step away from Trump and the Republican Party, it’s important for them to feel like they’re supporting a Democrat who actually knows them, knows their priorities, and is willing to fight for them.” 

Perriello continued: “I think that’s why we’re probably the reddest district that will flip this year.”

It’s expensive to run ads in Richmond-area counties like Powhatan, meaning campaign stops like this one are all the more crucial for the coalition-building Perriello has been working tirelessly on.

“They might be feeling betrayed by Trump, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to vote for Democrats,” he said. “That’s got to be the work of showing up and listening.” 

Contrary to McGuire, Perriello does not take corporate PAC money, or accept contributions from Dominion Energy, the largest and most influential investor-owned utility in the state. Yet the Democratic candidate still has a 2-1 spending advantage over McGuire, who has refused to debate him. McGuire “doesn’t have answers to the questions of why he screwed over the people he’s supposed to represent,” Perriello said in an interview. Perriello was the only candidate to speak at the district’s general candidate forum on September 9; McGuire was gallivanting at a Trump rally in Texas.

Democratic PACs also have a substantial spending advantage in the district. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) added Perriello to its coveted “Red to Blue” program over the summer. 

The race is tight. Trump won the district by 9 points in 2024, but a September poll from shows McGuire leading Perriello 46 to 45 percent. That poll also shows a generic Democrat beating a generic Republican by 48 to 46 percent, meaning Perriello may have room to grow. In polls in which respondents hear about McGuire’s voting record, the race flips in Perriello’s favor by five points. 

PERRIELLO HAS A LOT TO WORK WITH when it comes to attacks on McGuire. But it also helps that many of the district’s residents are already familiar with Perriello. 

“What I think the district wants from me is an ability to walk and chew gum in the sense that we can immediately focus like a laser on bringing costs down, while also focusing on restoring Congress as a check on the executive,” he told the Prospect. “We need to be ready to do that, regardless of whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat.”

Voters elected Perriello in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Although he served a single term, Perriello secured meaningful legislative victories aimed at building back Main Street in the post-recession years. He cast the decisive vote to pass the Affordable Care Act, supported federal recovery legislation to help rebuild the housing market, voted to end bailouts for Wall Street, and spearheaded efforts to release emergency relief to seniors facing high drug costs. 

“I’m not going up there to get a lapel pin because I already have one of those,” said Perriello. “I’m going up there to prevent a generational setback in rural healthcare and to restore a system of checks and balances from the seat that was first held by James Madison.” 

Health care is the cornerstone of Perriello’s platform. Some 200 doctors and nurses from around the district have endorsed him. The health care providers slammed McGuire for voting to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which has accelerated the decline in rural health services, driven up health insurance premiums, and left many Americans uninsured. Most counties in the district do not have enough primary care providers, and multiple rural hospitals have been forced to shutter their labor and delivery units. Eleven counties in Virginia’s Fifth District have no obstetric care whatsoever. All of this amounts to what Perriello called a “death spiral for rural communities,” laying the blame on the Trump administration and McGuire. “He’s literally put people’s lives at risk with the gutting of rural health services,” Perriello said, “and of course, the worst cuts are scheduled to take place after the election.” 

Averting that death spiral is a top priority, he said. 

“Democrats can’t screw this up, and I’ve already started making that clear to leadership in D.C.,” Perriello told the Prospect. “We need a plan to prevent the Medicaid cliff in January,” he said, referring to OBBBA’s post-election cuts.

Read: Trump funding cuts endangering city and rural hospitals alike

Perriello recently spoke with a Halifax County resident whose mother went into cardiac arrest and had to be rushed to the hospital. Thankfully, “she was fine,” Perriello recalled, “but the paramedic said that if this happened a year from now, when the South Boston Hospital will probably close if we don’t prevent the Medicaid cliff, the mom would have died on the way to Richmond in the hospital.” 

It takes roughly two hours to drive from Halifax County to major medical centers in Richmond.  

“We can’t allow people’s zip code to be a death sentence just because the Republicans gutted rural health, and that’s where this is,” said Perriello. “This is not a political issue. This is a life-and-death issue.” 

When Perriello first assumed office, the nation was plummeting into economic depression. President Obama demanded a recovery package on his desk no later than January 20, 2009—the day he was sworn in. 

“We moved decisively, and we shifted from bailing out Wall Street to getting economic relief to Main Street,” Perriello told the Prospect. “We need to have that same urgency for preventing the Medicaid cliff.” 

The Big Beautiful Bill unlocked $380 billion in tax credits for AI companies, many of which have plowed through Virginia in pursuit of more and more hulking data centers. Perriello said that as a member of Congress, he would put that money back into Medicaid. “I would do it in January and have it on the president’s desk. If he vetoes it, we go from there. But if I was a Republican senator who was up for re-election in 2028, and you put that bill on the desk, I’d be sprinting for an opportunity to co-sign that with the Democrats.” 

Read: Welcome to Virginia, ground zero for data center defiance

FOR A GROWING NUMBER of Virginians, the sense of betrayal they feel is not limited to the Trump administration. It extends to the local level. 

Speaking at the AI data center town hall in Powhatan, a former tech industry executive who declined to share his name with the Prospect pointed the finger at county officials over their unanimous decision to approve a data center development in eastern Powhatan last year.

“My property taxes on my small farm went through the roof this year. No explanation, no nothing, and I can’t get information about the data center contract because it’s not public,” he said. “These things should not be just passed by supervisors because they’re getting their palms greased. This should go to the voters every time … Every board supervisor who voted for it should be removed, and John McGuire hasn’t done a thing for any of us.” 

Applause filled the room. Perriello took off the blue suit jacket he was wearing. When it comes to AI, there are two particular issues that stand out to him, one of which is federal preemption. 

“Big tech executives who have spent a lot of money on Trump’s election have asked him to do something called federal preemption,” Perriello said. “That would make the federal government preempt any attempt by a state to regulate artificial intelligence or create liability for the damages created by artificial intelligence, and they’re preempting those state laws without creating a federal standard.” 

McGuire and 214 other House Republicans voted to insert a 10-year federal preemption moratorium on state AI regulations into OBBBA in May 2025, but the Senate voted 99-1 to strip the provision from the broader package during its vote-o-rama two months later. 

Renewed efforts for a shorter federal preemption moratorium on such regulations have stalled. However, Perriello said it remains “one of the biggest fights in D.C. right now.” In his view, federal preemption “is going to end up becoming the vote that NAFTA was in the ’90s,” likening it to a “litmus test of who’s standing with the people to try to help with this transition, and who is pouring fuel on the fire of our job loss and our loss of privacy.” 

Perriello was once a liability skeptic. Now, he sees liability and regulation working in tandem as essential. That’s in addition to his belief that AI should only be used where it is additive, such as in bionic prosthetics and specialized manufacturing. Perriello has called for a “global détente” between the U.S. and China on AI development.  

“China is in a prisoner’s dilemma,” Perriello said. “They’re more scared of AI than we are, but if they think AI is going to happen, they are more scared of not being in first place.” 

The other AI-related issue Perriello has been keen to tackle is eminent domain, which empowers the government to seize property for essential infrastructure, typically through right-of-way easements. But this legal power has two constitutionally-enshrined caveats: the property owner receives compensation, and the infrastructure—whether that be a transmission line, gas pipeline, water line, or fiber optic cable—is consistent with the public interest. 

Critics argue that investor-owned utilities like Dominion Energy have abused eminent domain to backstop private profits, rather than serve the public good. Perriello is one of them. “I believe it is unconstitutional,” he told the Prospect. Perriello has also joined Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger in opposing the proposed $67 billion merger between NextEra and Dominion Energy. Staff at the Virginia State Corporation Commission recommended that the commissioners reject the merger in a filing this week. 

Asked what kind of working relationship he envisions with state leaders, Perriello had an amusing example: “We want to be like the Norway fans in the World Cup. We want to all be rowing in the same direction.” Virginia Lieutenant Governor Ghazala Hashmi referred to Perriello not as a former congressman, but as a “soon-to-be congressman” in her opening remarks at an affordability panel in Goochland County on Tuesday morning. 

“Let’s be clear,” Hashmi said. “Virginia taxpayers shouldn’t have to keep picking up the tab for disastrous decisions made by people such as John McGuire and Donald Trump without regard for their consequences to our constituents.” 

The panelists shared their struggles with rising costs, speaking at length about the impacts of skyrocketing diesel prices, Trump’s tariffs, and the administration’s sweeping cuts to the social safety net. For Perriello, their stories “bruise the soul.”  He alluded to his previous experience serving as the U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan, the Great Lakes Region of Africa, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“I’ve worked in countries that are more authoritarian, and I can tell you that when bad people hold power, they can do an enormous amount of harm. They can create fear. They can create pain. They can create hunger,” said Perriello. “When decent people step up to do public service, we don’t solve every problem, but we can make things a little easier … I think that’s the choice set here.” 

He continued: “I hope that we will do better because I think the people of Goochland and the people of Central and Southside Virginia deserve better than what we’ve been seeing.”