Rep. Tom Perriello: Targeted by GOP But Not Backing Away from Climate Issues. By David Roberts, Grist, February 25, 2010."Rep. Tom Perriello won one of the most celebrated upsets of 2008, narrowly defeating incumbent Republican Virgil Goode to represent Virginia's 5th District, an historically red district that Obama lost by 2.5%. Since then he has voted against the Democrats on a few high-profile issues -- he voted against Obama's budget -- but with them on the biggest ones: the stimulus bill, the health-care reform bill, and the American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACES), also known as the Waxman-Markey bill. Conventional wisdom says that those votes have left Perriello highly vulnerable in 2010 -- he's on the Rothenberg Report's Dangerous Dozen list -- but the latest polling shows him neck-and-neck with likely opponent Robert Hurt... The way Perriello sees it, voters respect him for doing what he thinks is right and standing behind it, even when they disagree. As I discovered when I talked to him on Tuesday, his alleged vulnerability has done nothing to suppress his fighting spirit.
"Q. If it came to the floor today, would you vote for ACES again? A.I would vote for any aggressive energy-independence effort. This is the challenge of our time -- the jobs opportunity, the national security challenge, the scientific challenge of our era. Any plan that uses market forces to signal a carbon-constrained environment is going to move us in the right direction. People who don't support this kind of aggressive energy independence are just selling Americans short.
"Q.Nothing has changed your mind since that original vote? A.Well, I always preferred a tax shift with a major reimbursement on payroll taxes as a cleaner and clearer way to do it. I think there are plenty of better ways we could have written the bill. But you show me a way to get to 218 [votes] on a victory for America's energy independence and national security and I'll be there... If voters respect that the bill is actually going to transform our economy, make us more competitive and more independent, they'll support it. If it seems like it's just a sell-out to the big donors from the oil and gas companies, they won't support it. That's the question that we should be asking: Does this solve the problem? Is this a solution worthy of the American people? And if it is, then great; let's move forward with it."
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