He thinks his support of cap and trade had little to do with his defeat. He said it seemed in Tuesday’s election that congressmen who supported cap and trade fared better overall than those who did not.

That’s from a Martinsville Bulletin piece today on Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA). He was citing post-election analysis that found nearly two thirds of the House Democrats who voted ‘no’ on the House climate and clean energy jobs bill lost their seats, whereas 80% of the Democrats who supported a carbon cap kept their seats (see here).

The Viriginian representative is a true climate hawk, who said after his vote on Waxman-Markey:  “The Republicans may win some seats because of this vote, but they can’t regain their souls for demagoguing the issue.” Earlier this year, he told the ‘spineless’ Senate to get ‘its head out of its rear end’ and confront climate crisis.”

Perriello offers this explanation for his slim 8,660 vote loss out of 234,989 cast:

 

He told supporters that he received the most votes in cities in the district, including Martinsville, Danville and Charlottesville.

Yet “at the end of the day, Mr. Hurt got more votes,” he said, noting that Hurt generally was favored in rural areas.

“People had a lot of anxiety about the direction that the country has been going in,” Perriello said. He indicated he thinks that contributed to his loss as well as the losses of other Democratic candidates.

He said, however, he thinks legislation he and other Democrats have backed, such as health care reform and increased aid for college students, is helping people and will continue to do so in the future.

As proof, he recalled a conversation he recently had with a store clerk who told him she is a single mother whose son is in college. He said she told him, “You’ve made it easier” for her family economically.

Perriello voted in support of the controversial cap and trade emissions trading legislation. He said that when the House approved the legislation, as far as he knows, there was no indication that the Senate would shelve it.

Then again, he said, “anyone who watches Washington knows the Senate may not do anything” on legislation approved by the House.

He thinks his support of cap and trade had little to do with his defeat. He said it seemed in Tuesday’s election that congressmen who supported cap and trade fared better overall than those who did not.

Perriello ran on his votes unlike so many others who ran away — see Democrats: “If We’re Gonna Lose, Let’s Go Down Running Away From Every Legislative Accomplishment We’ve Made.”

As a result, he won respect across-the-board, made a strong showing in a Republican-leaning district, and should have a bright future, as The Daily Progress reports:

Despite his loss Tuesday, Perriello’s campaign on Thursday pointed to the fact that the freshman Democrat exceeded expectations and won more than 110,000 votes in a GOP-leaning district while swimming against a strong anti-Democrat tide.

The race drew the highest voter turnout in Virginia, with 55.3 percent of the district’s voters casting a ballot.

Perriello’s strong showing on Tuesday is feeding speculation about his political future.

Former GOP congressman Tom Davis of Fairfax County told the Washington Post that Perriello is “still very viable.”

“The sky’s the limit for him,” Davis said. “He’s universally respected. If he wants to stay in politics, he’s the kind of person you want in politics. He’s principled. He’s earnest. He’s polite. He’s all of those things. He can come up to Fairfax, and he’ll probably win forever.”

Perriello won “everyone’s begrudging admiration,” Davis said, because he ran a hard-fought campaign that did not avoid talking about his record voting in favor of health-care reform and other Democratic-backed initiatives.

Kudos to Perriello.  We need many, many more like him.

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