Tom Perriello is one of my favorite congressional candidates in the country. He's got a amazing background, he's helped take down Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, was a major player in the peace and reconciliation process in Sierra Leone, helped found the online grassroots people-powered humanitarian movement Avaaz.org and many other things. Now he's running against Virgil Goode, a proud bigot and one of the worst if not the worst member of Congress. And he's been running some great ads created by the best ad firm in the country (IMO) Eichenbaum & Associates

Here is another great ad he's running

And what's Goode running ads about? That Tom used to have a scary beard.

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Crossposted at The Motley Moose

I had the opportunity recently to chat with Tom Periello, the Democrat running for Congress in VA-05. Now, for those of you not familiar with the Commonwealth, Virginia-05 is a district that runs from the North Carolina border almost all the way to the DC exburbs. While it's very diverse, including both the University of Virginia and Martinsville Speedway, it's a very conservative district, including Lynchburg, which is home to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

However, Virginia-05 is probably more nationally recognized to the progressive community as the home of this man:

Recognize him? See if this rings a bell:

The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.

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That's right. Yesterday at a debate between Rep. Virgil Goode of Virgina's 5th district and his Democratic challenger Tom Perriello Goode said this

"And they want me out of Congress, the liberal Democrats want me out. And they want me out because I'm a conservative voice, if we can silence that person that's exactly what we want, we want more mushers up here  in Congress that won't speak out and stand out. They want a Obamajority in this country, Tom is on the Obamajority list for the US House of Representatives, they want to get him in there because they know he is going to be voting with them. They want to control the White House, 60 votes in the US Senate and a strong majority in the US House of Representatives."

Goode is famous for using bogeymen to scare people, he attacked Rep. Keith Ellison for being a Muslim and repeated tall tales about China that even Dick Cheney said where false.

Now he's found a new bogeymen. He's attacking the Obamajority, an ActBlue page started by a 14 year old blogger--me.

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Remember Virginia Republican Rep. Virgil Goode, whose reaction to the victory of Democrat Keith Ellison - the first Muslim elected to Congress - can be termed, to say the least, "racist"? In a recent letter to his constituents, Goode wrote, "The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran." He later added, "I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped."

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Back in February, when the first solid allegations that Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) had accepted illegal campaign contributions from Randy "Duke" Cunningham briber MZM, I noted that ethics issues could compel this race to become competitive. Now, as the AP's Pete Yost reports, there has been a guilty plea in connection with these illegal contributions, which could further put this seat into play for the Democrats.

An ex-employee at a defense contractor pleaded guilty Friday to making illegal donations to the campaign of Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., marking the latest chapter in a congressional bribery probe.

[...]

Late last year in the midst of the Cunningham scandal, Goode's campaign gave $88,000 of MZM-linked donations to charity. The Virginia congressman leads the list of those receiving contributions tied to the company, said the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign spending.

Goode, also a member of the House Appropriations Committee, was instrumental in persuading MZM to locate an office in Martinsville, Va., according to a news release issued by the Virginia governor's office in 2003.

Virginia's fifth district is not the easiest place for the Democrats to win, with George W. Bush winning 55 percent and 56 percent of the district vote in 2000 and 2004, respectively. But as I wrote back in February, the district does have deep Democratic roots.

Historically, however, VA-05 has been a Democratic district. When Goode was first elected in 1996, he was a conservative Democrat vying to succeed another conservative Democrat, L. F. Payne. In fact, the last time the fifth district supported a Republican before Goode's first run under the GOP banner in 2002 was in 1886, and before that, during Reconstruction.

The Democratic challenger in the district, Al Weed (whose campaign frequently posts on MyDD), might be gaining traction in the district -- or at least Goode appears to be losing traction. According to a recent Zogby poll, Goode's reelect numbers are below 50 percent now, which is never a good sign for an incumbent.

At this point, Weed is at a fairly substantial fundraising disadvantage, though you can help change that by visiting his ActBlue page. With a bit more support, I have no doubt that Weed can make a real race out of this.

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