Virginia's liberal Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello faces one of the toughest re-election battles in the country. The freshman Democrat voted for cap-and-trade last summer. He voted for ObamaCare even after hearing out his constituents in more than 20 town hall meetings. Though 2008 was a boom year for Democrats, he managed to scrape out only a 727-vote victory over Republican incumbent Virgil Goode. No wonder the National Journal recently ranked Mr. Perriello's seat the 14th most likely Democratic seat to flip to the GOP.
And Mr. Perriello's best hope of salvation? A fractious local Tea Party movement, which might just bail him out by backing an independent candidate and dividing his conservative opposition in November.
Though none of his GOP rivals had even begun campaigning in earnest, a February poll already had him trailing the Republican frontrunner, state Sen. Robert Hurt, and leading most of his seven other largely unknown GOP opponents by less than 10 points. But here's the catch for the GOP. For Tea Party conservatives, Mr. Hurt would be a far-from-ideal standard-bearer because of his 2004 vote in favor Democratic Gov. Mark Warner's big tax hike. All six of his GOP rivals are positioning themselves to the right of Mr. Hurt, and several have hinted they would back an independent run if he becomes the nominee.
"I feel [Mr. Hurt] is an establishment Republican. I would describe him as a situational conservative," rival candidate Jeff Clark, owner of a local water-testing business, told the Lynchburg News & Advance. "Returning power to the Republicans, after they have contributed to messing everything up in the first place, is ludicrous."
For his part, the Democratic Mr. Perriello has been mounting an aggressive campaign to defend his ObamaCare vote. At a senior center, he gave out doughnut holes to represent the Medicare prescription-drug "doughnut hole" the bill was supposed to fix. He also defended his climate-change vote, comparing the battle against foreign oil to the Normandy invasion. Mr. Perriello is much better funded than any of his GOP rivals, raising an impressive $1.6 million through March 31 -- four times the haul of the GOP's Mr. Hurt. Sniffs Andy Sere, regional press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee: "Left-wing elites from San Francisco to New York City appreciate his willingness to sell out Virginians to push their job-killing agenda."
Republican donors have been wary about spending money on a contentious primary, but cash is likely to flow once the field clarifies. "There's a real heavy sentiment that they just want to beat Perriello, whoever the nominee turns out to be," says one of his GOP rivals, biology teacher Feda Kidd Morton.
