You can find our stories on Republican incumbent John McGuire here and independent Cooke Harvey here.
Tom Perriello bounced through the produce section and down the aisles of a Food Lion grocery store in Keysville around 6 p.m. on a Monday in early October.
He picked up items, looked at the price tags, introduced himself and talked to shoppers and employees — and shot a campaign video before breezing back out of the busy store.
It was the first of two back-to-back stops at grocery stores, in Keysville and then Victoria, and he was about a third of the way through “24 Hours of Tom,” a blitz of events that saw the Democratic candidate campaign around the clock in 24 different localities across the 5th Congressional District.
Perriello had started his 24-hour campaign marathon at 8 a.m. and had only had one cup of coffee so far.
He heard from store patrons in Keysville and Victoria about the high cost of food and from employees about the high cost of business. With the help of a campaign staffer, Perriello shot a video for his campaign social media accounts, first in the produce section and then in the candy aisle, while shoppers went about their business around him.
In the last stretch of the midterm election campaign, Perriello said he sees a path forward in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District paved with the support of voters from all political stripes, largely due to economic hardship. Perriello has attributed that hardship to the actions of the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress — including his opponent, freshman Rep. John McGuire — that has not checked the executive branch.
Perriello, of Charlottesville, entered the race in late 2025 for a district that he represented in Congress almost 20 years ago. He won the Democratic nomination in August to challenge McGuire, of Goochland County, in a district that hadn’t voted for a Democrat since the 2008 election that had ushered him into Congress for his first term.
McGuire had won election in 2024 in the then “solidly Republican” district by 15 percentage points. In 2025, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, won the district by 7.6 percentage points as Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger went on to win statewide by 15 percentage points.
Regardless of the headwind typically seen by Democrats in a Republican district, Perriello remained upbeat and confident in his campaign.
“We are way ahead of expectations in terms of building this broad alliance and putting ourselves essentially in a tied position,” Perriello said.
A poll conducted in early October by The Washington Post and the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government put McGuire 6 points ahead of Perriello, just outside the margin of error.
Perriello seeks to build a broad coalition
The “broad alliance” Perriello’s campaign has built includes Republicans for Perriello, Farmers for Perriello and hundreds of healthcare providers who have issued their support for the Democratic candidate, he said.
An hour before his grocery store visits, Perriello had joined a group of about 10 supporters at the home of Cornell “Brick” Goldman, a third-generation farmer in Charlotte County.
There, he passed out chocolate chip cookies baked by his mom and heard from a group of community members about the high cost of diesel fuel and its effect on rural life and farmers’ ability to do their job. He also heard about their difficulties accessing healthcare and concerns about how H.R.1, the federal spending bill enacted in 2025, has reduced access to Medicaid and food assistance benefits.
Perriello’s campaign has benefited from Trump’s low approval rating, which ranges from 32% to 37% depending on the poll, and from McGuire’s continued support of the president.
The unfortunate side to his campaign’s relative success, Perriello said, is that it’s attributable to the economic pain voters are feeling. Those increased costs can be tied to U.S. involvement with the conflict in Iran and tariffs that have been levied against trade partners by the president.
“Everywhere we go, people can’t afford gas, groceries, healthcare premiums are going through the roof, and it’s tough to see that kind of pain in the community,” Perriello said. “I think a lot of folks have translated that into hope about the campaign, that maybe there’s somebody that actually cares and is willing to go and fight back against some of this.”
While McGuire is still favored to win the 5th District, Perriello’s campaign has outraised the incumbent $3.4 million to $1.9 million as of Sept. 30. Perriello has also benefited from “anti-McGuire” independent expenditures to the tune of $1.2 million, which is more than “pro-McGuire,” “anti-Perriello” and “pro-Perriello” independent expenditures combined, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, which tracks campaign spending.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report recently shifted Virginia’s 5th District race from “solidly Republican” to “likely Republican.” It cited spending by liberal political action committees and investment in ads that are “hammering McGuire on the airwaves.”
“I think, for a lot of independents and conservatives who have turned on McGuire and Trump, it’s also useful that they know I’ve shown up in the community, that I’ve lived up to the promises that I made,” Perriello said during an interview later that evening.
He was referring to his first term in Congress, from 2009 to 2011, when he held 100 hours of town hall meetings, and his vote on the Affordable Care Act in 2010 as well as on stimulus packages aimed at pulling the U.S. out of the 2008 recession. Often during those town halls, he faced angry crowds upset by government spending. Perriello lost his reelection bid in 2010 to Republican Robert Hurt by a margin of 3.8 percentage points.
“I think that some of the things that I stood up for 15 years ago have actually ended up benefiting a lot of the people who at the time didn’t think those were going to be good programs,” he said.
Trump as an anchor, and what comes next
The next stop on Perriello’s marathon campaign tour was the Blackstone Chamber of Commerce, where the candidate toured the office and talked with the chamber chair, Chris Page, about efforts to revitalize the town.
Perriello heard concerns from Page regarding education and the local workforce pipeline, issues regarding local housing supply and the need for federal funding to support infrastructure maintenance, repairs and upgrades.
At various campaign stops throughout the day, Perriello worked in attacks on his Republican opponent, pointing out that McGuire has voted to support Trump’s initiatives that have driven up prices. The president has become an anchor weighing the incumbent down, Perriello said.
“I think what we’ve seen in this campaign is that people feel really betrayed by Trump,” Perriello said in the interview. “As diverse as this district is, politically, it’s actually extremely united in thinking everything is too expensive.”
He added that the goal of his campaign is to get the district to a “better kind of politics,” outside of the current “blue team” or “red team” silos. He said he has heard from people across the district who feel like they no longer have a home in partisan politics and that his campaign aims to welcome them.
“People know they don’t have to agree with each other, but they can agree that the Valley Link transmission line is a bad idea for rural communities,” he said. “People don’t have to agree on every issue, but they all want rural communities to have access to health services. Not everyone has to agree, but we can agree that it is not OK for the president to make his family billions of dollars richer while making everyone else poorer.”
Regardless of the bleak economic outlook, Perriello said that campaigning has given him hope for post-Trump era politics. Those politics, he said, focus on economic opportunity for Central and Southside Virginia rather than partisanship.
“This is not just an anti-Trump campaign, it’s what comes after Trump that rebuilds an American dream that people under 30 might actually believe in someday,” he said.
He added that the best way to rebuild bipartisanship in the U.S. is for Democrats to win big in the midterm elections.
“If there is a big blue wave, it’s going to help the more commonsense Republicans to be able to come in behind that and get to a post-Trump position,” he said.
Policy goals and the post-election landscape
One of Perriello’s aspirations is to pass legislation to fund Medicaid by ending federal tax breaks for data centers. Once those tax breaks have ended, the revenue from data centers could be used to pay for Medicaid reimbursement and health insurance premium assistance.
The Virginia General Assembly approved a similar measure in the biennium budget during the 2026 legislative session by establishing a consumption tax for data centers. The consumption tax revenue has been put toward, among other things, an effort to subsidize Affordable Care Act health insurance premiums, after those federal subsidies ended in 2025.
“I can imagine a Republican who is going to be up for reelection in 2028. I think they’re going to be sprinting to be part of a bipartisan deal that takes tax credits away from data centers and puts it back into the rural healthcare system,” Perriello said.
He added that the legislative branch needs to reestablish itself as coequal to the executive in the coming Congress. To do that, he said, Congress would need to remove Trump’s authority to wage war in Iran or establish tariffs on trade partners and remove the president’s discretion over the science and health funding appropriated by the legislative branch.
“This move toward a pure presidential system is not really what our checks and balances system is based on. It’s not just about Congress reasserting itself to check Trump. It’s also about Congress doing its damn job,” he said.
At 9 p.m. that Monday, just over the halfway mark of the whirlwind 24-hour campaign tour, Perriello joined a small group of pastors and faith leaders for a prayer circle at the Journey United Methodist Church on Patrick Henry Highway in Amelia County.
After an opening prayer, attendees asked the candidate questions about what he thought a Democratic majority in Congress should do: Should it spend its time prosecuting Trump or work to lower the cost of groceries, gasoline and other everyday items?
Perriello told the group that Congress could both “box Trump in and bring costs down” by invoking the War Powers Resolution to force the president to withdraw from the current conflict with Iran. Congress had voted on the effort earlier in the year, but none of the resolutions have made it to Trump’s desk — and if they did, the president would likely veto the measures. Congress would need a two-thirds supermajority to enact legislation over a president’s veto.
The Democratic candidate added that there are people in the Trump administration that he believes should be removed from their posts immediately, likely through impeachment, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
In an earlier interview with Cardinal News, Perriello said he believes American politics is on the cusp of a realignment.
“Right now, I think voters are looking at an idea, and their first instinct is not to say, ‘Where does it fit on some axis of right, left and center?’ They’re saying, ‘Will this make my life better?’” he said. “I think what people are looking for is bold solutions that will actually make a difference in their life more than they worry about what an academic might classify it as.”
He said that conversations that he has had with residents in the district during listening sessions and campaign stops over the past 10 months have informed the issues he has focused on. He hoped his effort to visit every locality in the district across his 24-hour campaign blitz and his continued effort to sprint through the tape on Nov. 3 will leave a lasting impression with voters.
“I want people in the district to know I’m fighting for everyone in the district. There’s no precinct I don’t care about. I don’t care if you voted for me or didn’t vote for me,” he said. “I’m fighting for you.
“I’ve joked before that when I read about democracy, I get depressed, and when I practice democracy, I get hopeful. And every time I’m out with people, I see how we can come together and how we can have a better kind of politics.”
Perriello continued on to a number of different locations across the 5th District after the Amelia stop during his “24 Hours of Tom” campaign blitz. He and his campaign staff finished the event at 9 a.m. in Albemarle County. Perriello was back up and campaigning after about an hour and a half of sleep, a staffer said.
