Perriello claims victory; Goode has yet to concede

MARTINSVILLE — Democrat Tom Perriello claimed victory Friday in his against-all-odds campaign to unseat longtime GOP Congressman Virgil H. Goode Jr., R-Rocky Mount.

“We can now say that the outcome is certain,” Perriello, 34, told a crowd of jubilant supporters Friday afternoon. “We will win this race.”

Goode has not conceded, saying that “irregularities” occurred in Tuesday’s election and that he has doubts about the reported vote totals showing him trailing by 745 votes. A recount is possible, but only if Goode requests one.

Perriello, who lives and grew up in Albemarle County, declared his triumph Friday in Martinsville, a Southside community with the highest unemployment rate in Virginia.

Bringing jobs back to the economically depressed Southside region, Perriello said, will be his top priority once he gets to work in Congress in January.

“We have defied the pundits,” Perriello said. “We have defied the odds — through faith, through hard work, and through knowing that at the end of the day this campaign was about bringing jobs back to the people of Southside Virginia.”

If Perriello’s victory is upheld, he will have unseated an icon of Virginia politics in a stunning upset. Just three months earlier, Perriello was trailing Goode in the polls by 32 points.

The vote count in the 5th District — which includes Charlottesville and the counties of Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene and Nelson — had fluctuated widely during the two days after election night. By Friday afternoon, however, each of the district’s 22 localities had reported verified numbers that indicated Perriello received 158,703 votes, while Goode had 157,958.

Perriello and Goode were neck-and-neck until Thursday afternoon, when Charlottesville revised its vote count from election night. Two precincts, election officials discovered, had neglected to report 650 votes in Perriello’s favor.

Albemarle County election officials wrapped up their vote canvass Friday, finding another 100 votes for Perriello. In Albemarle’s case, the officials found, an election official at the Free Union precinct misreported Perriello’s tally as 442, rather than the correct 542.

With the surprise votes from Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Perriello’s campaign said it had clinched victory.

“My heart was hurting until I saw all those votes come in from Charlottesville,” said Perriello campaign volunteer Naomi Hodge-Muse of Martinsville. “You tell them thank you for counting the votes right. I worked too hard for that child.”

In a news conference Friday in Rocky Mount, Goode said that he has not yet decided if he will request a recount after the vote is certified by the State Board of Elections on Nov. 24.

In a written statement, Goode said the race is far from over.

“With the vote-counting process almost complete, it has become clear that there have been a number of reporting irregularities — including the misplacement of paper [ballots] and tape records from electronic machines and miscalculations in vote tallies,” Goode wrote. “In fact, almost 20 percent of all the voting precincts in the district had reporting errors.

“While current unofficial tallies have me trailing my opponent, these irregularities have cast doubt on the reported totals. It is essential that we get to the bottom of these problems and insist on a thorough and proper vote counting process. We will continue to fight to make sure that every single legitimate vote in the 5th District is accurately counted and reported.”

It is not unusual for unofficial vote counts to move slightly in the days after an election, as local election officials verify their vote tally.

A recount in Virginia is essentially another vote canvass. It is rare for vote counts to shift substantially in a recount. In 1989, for example, a recount in the gubernatorial race between L. Douglas Wilder and Marshall Coleman moved only 113 votes. A more recent statewide recount in the 2005 attorney general contest between R. Creigh Deeds and Bob McDonnell extended McDonnell’s lead by only 37 votes out of 1.94 million cast.

Political analysts said that Goode would have an almost impossible task of finding more than 745 votes.

Perriello, who had been greeted by supporters with a chant of “Go Tom Go,” said that he respects whatever Goode decides, but that he is moving forward with preparations to serve in Congress because the problems facing the 5th District need immediate attention. Assisting him with his transition will be L.F. Payne, who represented the 5th District from 1988 to 1997.

“Now it’s time to get to work,” Perriello said.

Perriello said his apparent victory marks a rejection of negative politics and represents a mandate for change and positive solutions to the toughest problems facing the 5th District.

“We started this campaign with a crazy notion that people are smarter and more decent than our politics give them credit for,” he said. “I’m so impressed to find out that’s true.”

Perriello ran his campaign emphasizing economic development, energy independence and new strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In declaring victory Friday, he asked his backers to hold him to his promises.

“As vigilant, as voracious as you have been to get me up to Washington, I hope you will be just as vigilant, just as voracious, in holding me accountable once I get up there,” he said.