Just heard of this from a friend, and while I don’t normally report the straight news, this is just too exciting to leave for Daily Kos Elections to deal with tomorrow morning.
In a major surprise, former Congressman Tom Perriello will challenge Lieutenant Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam in the race for the Democratic nomination of what is possibly the most high profile race of 2017, the Virginia Governor’s Race.
For those of you who don’t know about him this tweet pretty much sums up Perriello, and why he is so rare.
Tom Perriello, even as Blue Dogs in red districts were sprinting away from their own party as fast as they could in 2010, running as Diet Republicans even, stood firm for Democratic values, espousing his strong belief in “conviction politics.” He made his campaign about standing up for what was right over standing up for what was popular or trendy, defending the President on the ACA and cap-and-trade, running on Democratic achievements instead of running from them. And he nearly won, losing the race by just 4 points in his red district during the massive Republican wave of 2010.
"Conviction politics will make me more effective if I win. The first question I asked myself before deciding to run for office was not "can I win?" but "can I improve people's lives if I win?" -Tom Perriello on challenging the entrenched GOP incumbent in 2008, a race which he won by just a few hundred votes.
"There’s got to be something more important than getting reelected” -Tom Perriello on his vote in favor of cap-and-trade, calling it a national security imperative.
This challenge comes out of nowhere; Perriello was literally in the Democratic Republic of the Congo just days ago working to achieve a peace deal with warring factions. He is currently the United States Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region of Africa, a position previously held by Russ Feingold.
And it seems as though no one in the Virginia political establishment saw this challenge coming either. Ralph Northam, a self-identified “fiscal conservative and social liberal” who has supposedly now fallen in line with standard party ideology, had already locked up the endorsements of incumbent Governor Terry McAuliffe as well as Virginia’s two sitting Democratic Senators.
Larry Sabato, my town’s big political guru and director of the UVA Center For Politics, says Perriello could run “an insurgent campaign, perhaps akin to Bernie Sanders.”
We’ll see what happens, but it would be my pleasure to cast my first vote ever for this man, who represented my district, in the Democratic primary this year.
More to come...