Tom Perriello

Early life and education

Perriello was born in Charlottesville, VA, and grew up in Ivy, a small, affluent, unincorporated community west of Charlottesville. He is the son of Linda (née Gillooly), a financial analyst, and Vito Anthony Perriello, Jr., a pediatrician. His paternal grandparents were Italian immigrants, and his mother is from an evangelical Christian family from Ohio. He attended Murray Elementary School, Meriwether Lewis Elementary School, Henley Middle School and Western Albemarle High School in the county school system, and then graduated from St. Anne's-Belfield School, a private school. He attained the rank of Eagle Scout in Boy Scout Troop 114 in Ivy, and was a legislative page in the Virginia House of Delegates. He earned B.A. (1996) and J.D. (2001) degrees at Yale University. At Yale, Perriello was a Humanities major.

Early career

From 2002–03, Perriello worked for the UN-mandated Special Court for Sierra Leone, where he eventually becoming special adviser to the prosecutor, David Crane. He has worked as a consultant to the International Center for Transitional Justice in Kosovo (2003), Darfur (2005), and Afghanistan (2007) where he worked on justice-based security strategies. Perriello has also been a fellow at The Century Foundation and consultant to the National Council of Churches of Christ.

U.S. House of Representatives

In announcing his first bid for Congress in 2007, Perriello spoke of his conviction politics: "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?"

Citing the 2006 midterm elections, Perriello pointed toward the example of fellow Democrats including Senators Jim Webb, Sherrod Brown, and Jon Tester—all winning in difficult political environments with firm positions that cut across typical progressive or conservative ideologies. Perriello framed his positions as "for the people and not for the corporate establishment" and did not focus on partisan divisions.

During his time in the House of Representatives, Perriello would often explain his support for controversial votes by his standard of conviction politics. Perriello described his vote for Cap and Trade legislation as a national security imperative, stating "There’s got to be something more important than getting reelected,” in an interview with Politico. “If I lose my seat, and that’s the worst that happens, I could live with that.” Time termed Perriello an “unapologetic progressive” in naming him one of the “new civic leaders” in its 40 under 40 issue for 2010.

2008

In the 2008 election, Perriello won a narrow (50.1% to 49.1%) victory over Republican six-term incumbent Virgil H. Goode, Jr., a longtime figure in Virginia politics who had previously represented a large portion of the district in the Senate of Virginia. Perriello trailed Goode in the polls by 30% only three months before the election. Politico remarked that Goode's campaign was impaired by remarks by Goode that were interpreted as anti-Muslim and by a flap over Goode's tenuous connection to a gay-themed movie.

The traditionally Democratic urban areas of the district gave Perriello significant margins over Goode. While Goode won 13 of the 20 county-level jurisdictions in the district, Perriello won all but one independent city, Bedford, which went for Goode by only 16 votes. Ultimately, Perriello prevailed largely on the strength of a more than 25,000 vote margin in Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County. Perriello's performance showed the most dramatic improvements over past Democratic voting in the more conservative areas of the district hardest hit by decades of job loss and economic slowdown. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama also improved on past Democratic performance, but he ultimately lost this district by around 7,500 votes (2.5 percentage points). For example, Perriello significantly outperformed Obama in the district's strongly conservative southwestern portion. Ironically, this was Goode's base; he had represented much of the district's southern portion for 35 years at the state and federal level. Perriello may also have been helped by coattails from atop the ticket, as Mark Warner won the district in a landslide with 65 percent of the vote.

2010

Perriello lost to Republican nominee State Senator Robert Hurt in a race between the two and Independent candidate Jeffrey Clark. During the race, Perriello was noted for touting Democratic achievements during his two years in office rather than running from them. In recognition of his support for gun rights, Perriello received the endorsement of the National Rifle Association. He also received the endorsement of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in the race in recognition of his “strong support for veterans, national security and defense, and military personnel issues.”

His reelection campaign was targeted by the national Democratic party, as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent financial resources, ads, and staff to the district in an effort to protect a seat that Perriello had won for the Democrats by a razor-thin 727 margin in 2008. As early as two weeks after being elected in 2008, Perriello was targeted for defeat by national Republicans and by outside groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers' funded Americans for Prosperity. His effort to maintain his seat was marked by full days of campaigning, including one period called "24 hours of Tom" in which the congressman held one or two events every hour for twenty four hours in the final weeks of the election.

Ultimately, Perriello lost by 3.9 percentage points, over-performing in the Republican +5 district. As a point of comparison, another freshman Democrat in a Virginian Republican +5 congressional district (VA-02) lost by 11 points in 2010 to his Republican challenger. The two congressmen took dramatically different approaches to campaigning, with Perriello embracing his short congressional record that included votes for progressive legislation like the Affordable Care Act, and the other Democrat attempting to distance himself from his party.

Tenure

During the 2009 legislative session, Perriello voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March 2010. During debate over the health care bill in the House, he voted for the Stupak–Pitts Amendment to the Affordable Health Care for America Act, which would have prohibited the use of federal funds to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or danger to the life of the mother; however, Perriello later supported the final Senate version of the bill (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), which did not include the Stupak-Pitts language, and has since said he regrets his vote for Stupak, calling it the "worst vote of his career."

Perriello voted against the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009, because the bill extended unemployment benefits for only some states and excluded Virginia. He pressed the administration and Congress to include more infrastructure spending in the stimulus bill, and authored the Every Penny to Main Street Act, which would have used the money that banks paid back from the bailout to directly create new jobs in construction. He also repeatedly urged Democrats to introduce a comprehensive national jobs bill. Perriello opposed a ban on assault weapons while in Congress.

Perriello called for "keeping America safe by working to ensure that our military is equipped with the resources, equipment, and training necessary to win the global war on terrorism". Although he cast votes for the continuation of U.S. military action in Afghanistan, he also cosponsored legislation requiring U.S. President Barack Obama to submit an exit strategy for the end of combat operations in Afghanistan. Perriello also opposed removing the United States Armed Forces from Pakistan. In 2010, Perriello voted in support of the defense bill, 2010 military appropriations and spending for combat operations.

Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review

Tom Perriello was selected by Secretary of State John Kerry to lead the 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy & Development Review, a strategic planning process intended to be conducted every four years for the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The two agencies are made up of approximately 80,000 employees, with a budget of more than $50 billion. The resulting document, Enduring Leadership in a Dynamic World, set out four strategic priorities for American diplomacy and foreign assistance: preventing conflict and violent extremism, promoting democratic societies, advancing inclusive economic growth, and mitigating climate change. It also identified ways to make the agencies more efficient, including improving the use of data and diagnostics.

Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region and the Democratic Republic of Congo

In July 2015, President Obama appointed Tom Perriello to succeed former US Senator Russell Feingold as Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As Special Envoy, Perriello was the US representative to a region including Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda, countries working to overcome a recent legacy of civil war and genocide. Perriello was charged with implementing the administration’s policies of preventing mass atrocities and supporting the emergence of peaceful, democratic societies.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Perriello worked closely with the national council of Catholic bishops to support mediations between the President and opposition groups over a political crisis triggered when the President attempted to stay in office beyond his constitutional term. This work culminated in the historic New Year’s Eve agreement on December 31, 2016, that lays out a path to the first peaceful transition of power since the country’s independence in 1960.

2017 run for Governor

In December 2016, Perriello indicated that he would run for Governor of Virginia in the 2017 election on a platform centered around economic justice as well as resistance to the Trump Administration.

In March, a group of more than 30 former Obama staffers signed a letter endorsing Perriello for governor, including Obama’s 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe and former White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer. They were joined on April 4 by Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who appeared with Perriello at a George Mason University rally two days later. Our Revolution, a Sanders-affiliated group, would follow suit on April 14. Khizr and Ghazala Khan endorsed Perriello's campaign on April 19, while the Progressive Change Campaign Committee endorsed Perriello the next day. United States Senator Elizabeth Warren announced her endorsement of Perriello in an interview with HuffPost on April 24.

Perriello ran for the Democratic nomination against Virginia's Lieutenant Governor, pediatric neurologist and former state senator Ralph Northam, who prior to Perriello's entrance into the race had been endorsed by Virginia Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine; Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe; Virginia Representatives Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, Don Beyer, and A. Donald McEachin; Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring; and the full membership of the Virginia Democratic House and Senate Caucuses.

Throughout the race, Perriello faced criticism from NARAL (which has endorsed Northam) because of Perriello's 2009 vote in favor of prohibiting federal funding for abortion coverage in insurance plans subsidized under the Affordable Health Care for America Act—a vote which Perriello has claimed was an attempt to keep a promise to constituents in his conservative, mostly rural district. Perriello has since apologized repeatedly for the vote, calling it a "bad vote and a bad pledge," while promising that he sees abortion as a "fundamental right" that should be accessible to all women.

Perriello criticized Northam for having twice voted for George W. Bush—votes that Northam said occurred at a time when he was largely apolitical, prior to his first run for office.

Throughout the race, Perriello refused to accept campaign contributions from Dominion Energy, a state-regulated utility and Virginia's biggest political donor. Northam has accepted over $100,000 in donations from the company and its executives.

On June 13, 2017, Northam defeated Perriello in the primary. Perriello then immediately congratulated Northam on his victory on Twitter. Perriello is currently CEO of Win Virginia a PAC dedicated to helping Democrats win back the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017.