Posted on 07/03/2009 11:26:19 AM PDT by freespirited
ALTON, Va. — Rep. Thomas Perriello relishes an energy fight with Republicans — even here in the rural Southside.
The freshman lawmaker understands the potential consequences that he and other vulnerable Democrats face for backing a sweeping climate-change bill, and rather than ducking the issue, he’s embracing what may have been the toughest vote of his young political career.
“There’s got to be something more important than getting reelected,” Perriello said in an interview with POLITICO. “If I lose my seat, and that’s the worst that happens, I could live with that.”
But the 34-year-old believes Democrats will win this fight.
“This is a gift,” Perriello said of the vote. “For the first time in a generation, we have the chance to redefine our energy economy. …This is a great moment for us.”
It’s unclear whether voters in this part of Virginia, where tobacco farms are shrinking, textile mills have shut down and unemployment remains well above the national average, will embrace Perriello’s optimism about green jobs and cap and trade. Like many Democrats from Republican-leaning districts, Perriello is back home this week defending what may be a game-changing vote with consequences for 2010.
Perriello is one of the top targets in a national barrage of attack ads by the National Republican Congressional Committee, which has paid for a rare off-year television ad campaign against Perriello and launched radio ads and automated phone calls against a handful of his fellow Democrats.
But Republican confidence may be a little premature.
“This is an issue that is very dependent on the overall state of the economy,” said Larry Sabato, who runs The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, in an e-mail. “If the economy continues to be bad through 2010, then voters are more likely to give credence to the GOP charges.”
However, “if the economy improves,” Sabato continued, “voters won’t find the attacks credible. Really, how is anybody — even a professional economist — to know exactly what the effect of this bill will be? It’s so entangled with the rest of the economy.”
Indeed, the legislation doesn’t even have a direct impact on the barometer most Americans use to gauge the cost of energy — the price of gasoline.
“What’s going to increase the price of energy more?” asks E. Linwood Wright, an economic development consultant with the city of Danville, Va., in Perriello’s district. “The things in this bill? Or crude oil going back to $150-a-barrel?”
In the meantime, the fight will be about jobs, jobs, jobs.
Republicans claim passage of the Clean Energy act will result in millions of jobs moving overseas to countries with much less stringent environmental standards, countries like China and India. On the flip side, Democrats will offer rosy — and well-worn — projections that its passage will usher in a new era of prosperity in which millions of so-called green jobs are created.
Of course, neither outcome is a certainty, leaving plenty of room for political posturing.
The NRCC target list included some of the most vulnerable Democrats, like Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, Colorado Rep. Betsy Markey and Ohio Reps. John Boccieri, Mary Jo Kilroy and Zack Space. But the campaign committee also went after senior Democrats, like Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher — who negotiated large portions of the bill — Science Committee Chairman Bart Gordon of Tennessee and Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri.
But outside groups are coming to the defense of key Democrats, trying to protect supporters of the bill, including some of the eight Republicans who voted for it.
The Environmental Defense Action Fund went up with television ads this week thanking Perriello and a handful of other Democrats for backing the bill. The list includes Kilroy, Frank Kratovil Jr. of Maryland and Dan Maffei of New York. The group even ran ads thanking Republicans Dave Reichert of Washington and Leonard Lance of New Jersey. And some of the spots will run for two weeks.
In addition, the White House will send the president and his cabinet secretaries out on the road to stump for fellow Democrats, bolstering them where they need it. The secretaries of energy and agriculture will both make trips to Perriello’s district to meet with his constituents, the congressman said Friday.
So Perriello, who ousted longtime Republican Rep. Virgil Goode last year by a mere 727 votes, is working to get ahead of a potential problem 18 months before voters head to the polls.
In a barn in the middle of the VIRginia International Raceway, Perriello told a collection of elected officials and local business leaders: “There are two types of communities: There are communities that are looking backwards and communities that are looking forward.”
Textile mills and tobacco farms once thrived in Virginia’s “Southside,” near the North Carolina border. But the mills have been closing for decades, and the region produces 30 percent less tobacco now than it did just a few years ago, according to John Kennedy, the director of the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research, a program run under the umbrella of Virginia Tech University.
“If we can create an industry that produces ethanol and other fuels, we can utilize all this land,” Kennedy said.
The district still has plenty of agriculture and timber, and some local farmers worry the cost of this new economy will put them out of business.
And if Perriello is going to defend his vote on the climate change bill, he’ll need to explain it to folks like Carl Tinder.
“I don’t know what this means for me,” said Tinder, a small farmer who also manages a cattle farm in the northern part of the district. “It’s definitely a step in the direction I’m a little hesitant about.”
Community leaders are pooling their resources in a bid to collect grant money wherever they can in the hopes of spurring bio-fuel production or any other manufacturing jobs. At this stage, they are focused on job training.
“Employers need a trained workforce,” said Laurie Moran, president of the Danville Pittsylvania Chamber of Commerce, who has helped organize a local cooperative of government officials and business leaders to help amass public and private grant money.
“We need to support legislation that will support second generation bio-fuels,” Perriello said. “The government isn’t going to create the jobs. But it can give business the incentive to invest.”
The crowd in Alton responded well to Perriello, offering him a standing ovation before he delivered his brief remarks. But as the new congressman mingled after the speech, one attendee leaned over to another and whispered, “He cast the wrong vote.”
But after he finished, elected officials and business owners alike approached him about the prospects — or progress — of various grants and earmarks they were trying to secure through the $787 billion stimulus or through the regular appropriations process.
Republicans are hoping to undercut Perriello before he and his office get more firmly established in the region.
“Tom Perriello’s national energy tax vote was the defining moment of his short career,” NRCC spokesman Andy Sere said, adding that voters in his district who once thought of him as “that nice young man … is actually a smug globalist who cares more about his Daily Kos cred than the farmers, laborers and middle-class families in his district.”
One Roanoke station refused the run the campaign committee’s ad — which portrays Perriello as a tool of President Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). But the Lynchburg, Va,, News and Advance ran a story on the front-page Friday — opposite another headline about the community receiving $700,000 in stimulus money.
Perriello complains that these attacks are just more of the same “old politics” that helped Republicans squander the White House and their majorities on Capitol Hill.
“The Republicans may win some seats because of this vote, but they can’t regain their souls for demagoguing the issue,” Perriello said.
As a candidate, Perriello broke the mold in ways, by taking Democratic stands in a decidedly Republican district. He seems to have retained that confidence coming out of the election and wants to help Obama be bold — even in south central Virginia.
“People are sick of cowardice,” Perriello said. “It’s not the easy votes, it’s the hard votes.”
Unemployment in Charlottesville is 7%. It’s totally irresponsible to do anything that might make it worse.
All of the current crop of Dem congressfolk that took a seat by virtue of a thin margin are one-term wonders. Without Duh Won’s color-aware cadre of voters, these folk would be selling shoes at Pay less. If unemployment is still bumping 10% next July, most incumbents of all stripes are toast.
So if your Rep is listening, be sure to tell him. By the same token, if your Rep is ignoring your wishes, feel free to mention that his political life is about to change.
There things in the bill will cause oil to go $200 or higher, such as an anti-fracking of wells clause in it, that will kill well development in this country.
It’s totally irresponsible to do anything that might make it worse.
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Absolutely right, however if the cap and trade fails it can’t possibly make it worse regardless of who voted in favor of it.
Unfortunatly, those jobs are in other countries, other countries, other countries, other countries!!!
It didn’t scare them all that much......
They’re delusional. And gleefully committing political suicide as a result. 2010 will be like 1994, only moreso.
Truly amazing that someone suffering from terminal stupidity like this guy displays could be elected to anything. I suspect "his gift" from his constituents in the next election will be an early retirement (even with the help of ACORN) before he becomes fully vested in his pension at taxpayer expense.
Larry Sabato is doing his job for the Democrats here. We have to attack now, because we know that by next year, the job situation will be better, and the democrats will say it was because of all the bills they passed this year, even though what they are doing is making things worse.
If they had actually implemented Kyoto in 1997, the Democrats would be pointing to the last 10 years of cooling as proof that what they did was correct.
Democrats AREN’T going to win on this becuase (no matter how much someone wishes it): Government intervention into the market ~never~ produces any good changes.
THS WILL CAUSE LOSS OF JOBS, and the so called “green jobs” will by and large, never apear!
Taxing the air we breathe is not a gift. It's outright robbery based on a outrageous LIE propagated by a bunch of Marxist elitists who want to establish global governance and sieze control of all the worlds energy resources.
He shouldnot only loose his seat, he should be tried for treason for attempting to sell out our nations sovereignty, strip away the peoples freedom and enslave them under some unelected global governance elitists.
Evidently this guy is a “true believer”...you know, a useful idiot. Either that or Pelosi offered him a ton.
In the middle of this story is something the RNC and conservatives should emulate - outside groups are running advertising THANKING the people that voted for Cap and Trade. So the RATS not only have the media working for them they get a million dollars worth of advertising in their district as well.
I make this prediction: Perriello will be re-elected.
I also make this two-part prediction. First, in 2010, the vast majority of voters will remember clearly where they were when they heard that Michael Jackson had died. Second, in 2010, the vast majority of voters won’t even know that a global warming bill was ever proposed, let alone that it passed.
We are, sadly, looking at the last gasp of the American Republic. We are now witnessing the birth of a type of American socialist imperium.
So could America.
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