Perriello touts independent streak in bid to keep seat

When members of Congress cast their votes last Wednesday on whether to adjourn for the election season instead of acting on a hot income-tax issue, Reps. Bob Goodlatte and Tom Perriello voted alike.

They wanted to stay in session and decide whether to continue some, or all, of the Bush-era tax cuts.

Campaign commercials aimed at Perriello’s support of cap-and-trade, health care and stimulus funds might lead voters to think the session-closing vote was the first time the Democrat and the Republican ever had agreed on anything.

But it wasn’t.

House Democratic leaders won the adjournment vote 210-209 despite opposition from the conservative Goodlatte, R-6th District, and Perriello, D-5th District. The two, whose districts both reach into the Lynchburg metro area, have voted the same way 62 percent of the time over the past two years.

In fact, Perriello ranks 10th out of Virginia’s 11 members of Congress when it comes to voting with his party, which he does 90.4 percent of the time according to a Washington Post database of more than 1,500 votes cast in the House of Representatives since January 2009. Only Rep. Glenn Nye, D-Norfolk, has split with his party more often.

But those non-Democratic votes aren’t enough to align Perriello with conservative voters in the 5th District, said a spokeswoman for Robert Hurt, Perriello’s Republican opponent in the Nov. 2 election.

Two of Virginia’s better-known political pundits — Isaac Wood of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and Bob Holsworth of the Virginia Tomorrow blog — also said Perriello will have trouble convincing voters that his independent streak is enough to separate him from an image his opponent is building on a handful of controversial votes.

“On the three most important pieces of legislation that are killing jobs and driving this country into bankruptcy — the failed trillion-dollar stimulus, government takeover of health care, and cap and trade — Congressman Perriello has voted with (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi 100 percent of the time,” said Amanda Henneberg, Hurt’s spokeswoman.

Those three votes, out of all the ones cast in the past two years, put Perriello “out of step with the values of Central and Southside Virginians,” Henneberg said.

Hurt’s TV ads also link Perriello with President Obama on health care and other issues.

Perriello’s vote for the health-care bill also places him to the left of Reps. Nye and Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, who voted against health care but still are in hotly contested races of their own, Henneberg said.

Perriello said the Hurt campaign seeks to “falsely portray me as a liberal when I am a populist.”

“I rank as one of the most independent members,” Perriello said, citing a rating system used by National Journal magazine to evaluate the conservative and liberal aspects of Congress members’ voting records in 2009.

The National Journal scoring system indicated about 200 members of Congress had voting records the magazine considered more liberal than Perriello’s.

Goodlatte’s record ranked among the top 60 for conservative voting.

Perriello said he often splits away from the House Democratic caucus’s recommended positions, which “is a clear indication that I am fighting for the people of the 5th District,” he said. “I have broken with both parties on bailouts, trade deals and getting to a balanced budget.

“Essentially I have been challenging the elite consensus of both parties, and what we need now in Washington is people who will challenge those elites,” Perriello said.

Wood, who last week decided the 5th District race has moved into the “leans Republican” category, agreed that Perriello has differed from party leadership on some notable occasions, “voting against Obama’s budget and supporting the Stupak amendment to the health care bill.” The Stupak measure prohibits federal funding of abortion.

“Unfortunately for him, those acts of independence are overshadowed by the most high-profile votes he took,” Wood said.

“Perriello can try to cite his voting record as a whole as evidence of his relative independence from his party, but voters who have the ‘big three’ votes in mind may not buy his argument,” Wood said.

Holsworth said Perriello’s “endorsement by the NRA is a good indication” of his independent stance.

“But his support for the Democratic Party’s agenda on health, energy and stimulus spending will make it impossible for him to run, in the 2010 environment, as an ‘independent’ Democrat for whom party is irrelevant,” Holsworth said.

“Instead, he is likely to continue down the path his ads have recently taken — defending controversial votes like health care by pointing out features of the bills that are broadly popular, such as the new prohibition on denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions,” Holsworth said.