Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

Have you heard the latest? Meredith Richards says she’ll beat Virgil Goode. (Stop laughing.)

That’s right, this left-of-center member of the left-of-center Charlottesville City Council says that she’s going to out-do a beloved incumbent conservative congressman in the very conservative Fifth District. (Seriously, stop laughing.)

Those who are keeping tabs on the country’s congressional races – all 435 seats are up for grabs in November – say that only 40 campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives this year are competitive. That’s one out of 11. Or 9 percent.

The Goode-Richards race isn’t one of them. Not by a long shot. Despite what the somewhat energetic though disillusioned Richards might be telling voters and would-be donors.

Currently, Goode has about five times more cash than Richards. And word around Capitol Square – including among a few at Democratic headquarters – is that Richards might as well look places other than Richmond for serious dough. The state Democratic Party is already running lean and would rather target what little money it has where chances of victory at least aren’t laughable.

Gov. Mark Warner, a fellow Democrat, obviously must feign enthusiasm for Richards and her campaign. He’s got to attend a fund-raiser or two and stride along side her at a few Southside fall festivals. But he’ll do so a bit grudgingly. Warner did better than expected in rural Virginia in his own bid for governor last year. The last thing he wants is to be saddled with many of Richards’ ill-fitting positions.

Richards goes to great lengths to tailor her rhetoric. She makes it fit her audiences. She is, after all, a politician.

Richards wants to bring a halt to the death penalty – she’ll say it in liberal Charlottesville, but downplays it in conservative Danville. She’s also proud of her rather strident feminism – she’ll say that, too, before university crowds, but prefers not to at Sunday church picnics in Halifax. And she’s against getting rid of the estate tax – a position she definitely prefers not to talk about in parts of the district where passing on the family farm is a rapidly dying tradition because of the government’s take for doing so.

But Goode is not letting Richards’ positions go unnoticed. He’s constantly reminding voters wherever he goes – in every church hall, country store, fire station, and tobacco barn – that not only is Richards not a conservative, she’s not even a moderate. And by all accounts, Richards’ positions are going over just as one would expect. In Charlottesville, Richards’ left-leaning positions most certainly will push her past Goode in November’s vote tally. But everywhere else, she’ll be lucky to get 40 percent of the vote.

If Goode knows anything, he knows his district. His has been a household name since 1973, when at 27 and right out of law school he was elected as a conservative Democrat to the state senate. He held that office, rarely with opposition, until his 1996 election to congress. His weekends now are not spent at Washington soireés; they’re spent traveling the Southside’s rolling hills with his wife, Lucy, and their little dog, Bugsy.

It’s been those constant travels to constituents’ homes and farms and businesses that convinced Goode the national Democratic line was becoming tougher and tougher toe. For years, even back when he was in the Virginia senate, he’s been struggling to defend a party that has changed from where he’s always been to where Richards currently is.

Goode finally declared his independence in 2000 and sat as one of only two independents in congress until last February, when he found his way to his philosophical home, a place that truly reflects the Fifth District, the Republican Party.

Goode is in an increasingly strong position to do good things for the struggling farmers and manufacturers he represents. Not only does he serve on the House Appropriations Committee, he serves on its subcommittee that funds agriculture and rural development. Voters should not overlook that.

The people of the Fifth District will do in November what they’ve done routinely since the early ’70s, elect Virgil Goode to public office. Pulling the lever for him has become almost reflexive.

They’ll vote for the populist Goode because they know he’s one of them. His political stripes may have changed color from time to time, but his core beliefs haven’t. Folks know this down-home guy carries with him their down-home values. They know that he’s honest and hard-working and committed to the Southside.

Yeah, it’s a sure bet. Goode will be reëlected to congress this year. And he’ll continue being reëlected every other November from now on.

The Fifth District seat belongs to Goode for as long as he wants it. And those who live there will be forever the better for it.

Your thoughts?

The Bryant Archive

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A time for all Virginians to pull together

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Warner's California Ways

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