I’ve been keeping an uncharacteristically low profile. It’s not that I’ve lost enthusiasm or the will to fight; it’s more that my chosen battles this election just haven’t been able to compete with the Presidential. When you’ve got Sarah Palin and John McCain providing daily fodder – and an incredibly inspiring candidate like Barack Obama... well... it was just really hard to break through with anything having to do with a single House race. After all, there were 35 Senate races and 433 House races underway at the same time.
That said, it was a constant source of frustration that Tom Perriello’s campaign wasn’t made a netroots priority to a greater extent than it was. I’ll never take anything away from Darcy Burner, Donna Edwards or any of the other netroots icons, but Tom is a truly extraordinary person. Even if he had lost his race tonight, there is no doubt – not one scintilla – that Tom would have gone on to continue changing the world in profound ways.
Tom needs us now. Critically. I hope you will help.
Since most of you will not know the name Tom Perriello from Christopher Cringle, let me tell you how Tom's opponent attacked in the last week of the race: Virgil Goode ran ads in the district taking Tom to task for purchasing advertising on Al Jazeera.
What kind of ads? Well, they weren’t what you might think. They weren’t attack ads. Nope. They weren't even political.
In the aftermath of Abu Grahb, Tom Perriello took out ads on Arab television to apologize for the shortcomings of the American soldiers that committed war crimes and humiliated and abused Iraqi prisoners.
God only knows how many American lives those ads saved. (If y’all remember, Karen Hughes was tasked with propagandizing our presence in Iraq to Middle Eastern television audiences. So far as I know, she never approached the honesty and humanity Tom Perriello demonstrated with his ad campaign).
Anyway, I digress.
I wish I could say I feel really good because we won this race. I believe we have, but it is not official yet. And that’s why I’m writing my first diary since at least mid-October.
Over the last two months, I’ve poured my heart into getting Tom elected. I held a press conference to break a story about Virgil Goode, his press secretary, homophobia and hypocrisy. The story hit in the second week of October and got picked up throughout the district and nationally. Essentially, Goode’s press secretary acted in a gay art-house film, Eden’s Curve. It was his first role in a Hollywood movie. Just as the movie launched – at a time when the movie was touring gay film festivals throughout the world – Goode obtained a $150K earmark for the theater that the movie’s writer managed. The campaign was unable to produce documentation detailing how the $150K was spent. Finally, earlier this week it was revealed that Goode’s office fax number was used in the film’s promotion.
You can catch up on most of the story here.
Anyway, I saw an opportunity to make a difference. I made a movie and a Powerpoint presentation that told the whole sordid tale. I wrote a thoughtful letter and addressed it to the pastors in the district. I burnt 300 DVDs, printed 300 copies of the letter and sent them all to churches across the conservative Bible-belt section of the district.
I created a flier that set forth the broad outlines of the story. I ran off 1500 double sided copies, made several trips 2-3 hours south and distributed the fliers on the windshields of cars while their owners were in church or shopping at Walmart.
While I did my Stark thing, hundreds of volunteers canvassed neighborhoods, spent hours on the phones and tithed service-time to the communities they hailed from. Over 1000 hours of non-campaign work were donated to the district because Tom Perriello demanded as much from his supporters. Repeatedly, he referenced the fact that he was running because he sought to replace a Washington culture of corruption with a district-wide culture of service.
Well, in the end, our efforts may or may not have worked out. With 100% of the precincts counted, Tom has a 1200 vote lead out of 300,000 cast.
Virgil Goode is not a classy man. He will not go quietly. He’s going to fight tooth and nail.
And that is why I’m writing this diary. We will need your help in VA-5. We need you writing about Tom. We need you writing about this race. If you are a lawyer from VA, we’ll need you to help with the recount process.