Blue wave depth will be tested in a GOP-friendly Virginia House district

If Democrats are headed for a significant wave in November, one of the best places to measure its size may be a congressional district that, on paper, should be safely Republican.

Virginia’s 5th Congressional District stretches from the academic milieu of Charlottesville into some of the state’s most conservative communities, creating a stark political divide in a constituency stretching down Virginia’s spine from the University of Virginia’s hometown to the North Carolina state line. President Donald Trump carried the district by roughly 12 points in 2024, even as he lost Virginia to Democratic rival Kamala Harris 52% to 46%. While Republican Winsome Earle-Sears defeated now-Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) there 53.5% to 46.3% in the 2025 governor’s race — despite getting clobbered statewide against the former Democratic congresswoman 58% to 42%.

Yet Democrats are making a serious run at the seat.

Former Rep. Tom Perriello, 51, who narrowly won the district in 2008, when the Yale and Yale Law School graduate received significant national attention as a wunderkind candidate. Before losing reelection two years later.

Now he is challenging Rep. John McGuire (R-VA). McGuire, 58, won the seat in 2024 after beating a Republican incumbent in the primary. McGuire is a former Navy SEAL who spent seven years in the state Legislature.

Rep. John McGuire, left, vs. Tom Perriello, right. (Examiner illustration; Molly Riley/AP; Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Newscom)

McGuire attended Stop the Steal rallies throughout Virginia in 2020. He has claimed the COVID-19 pandemic was a “plan-demic” designed to change voting laws and rig the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost. McGuire admitted to attending Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington, D.C., but has denied participating in the subsequent attack on the Capitol Building.

In the House, McGuire has largely been a MAGA loyalist. On July 9, he introduced the Birthright Citizenship Clarification Act, which would put into law a Trump executive order the Supreme Court had recently struck down.

Perriello, since losing reelection in 2010 amid the Republican wave that effectively ended President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda after two years, has held a variety of roles in the public and private sectors. He was a State Department official in Obama’s second term. Perriello then ran unsuccessfully for the 2017 Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

For over four years, until July 2023, Perriello was the executive director for U.S. Programs at the Open Society Foundations, a George Soros-founded group. On Feb. 26, 2024, during what would turn out to be the final year of President Joe Biden’s single term, Perriello was appointed special envoy for Sudan. He resigned on Jan. 18, 2025, just before Trump took office for his second, nonconsecutive term.

Now, Perriello’s path back to Congress runs through Charlottesville and other Democratic-leaning communities, where he will need overwhelming margins while keeping Republican advantages in rural Southside from becoming insurmountable.

He has hired Del. Lily Franklin (D-VA) as his campaign manager, bringing a Southwest Virginia connection to a campaign seeking to rebuild the coalition that first carried Perriello to D.C.

The race is less a conventional battleground than a test of the national political environment and will shed light on how much the political landscape would have to change for a Democrat to win there. Democrats need to net three House seats in the 435-member chamber to claim their first House majority in four years.

Perriello believes part of the answer lies with voters who have become less attached to either party.

“People who had thought they belonged to the red team or the blue team for some time … are looking at the landscape and wondering whether they have a team at all,” Perriello told the Washington Examiner.

He describes the district he won in 2008 as a “July 4th popsicle,” with Charlottesville at the top, more competitive territory in the middle, and deep economic and political disaffection in the southern end.

Today, he said, the district looks more like “shattered glass,” with counties containing a mix of voters increasingly skeptical of being told they belong to one political team or another.

Perriello is also trying to make the campaign about issues that cut across partisan lines, particularly healthcare and the cost of living. He points to rural healthcare as an example, arguing that hospital and maternity ward closures affect voters regardless of their politics.

“People care about their families more than they care about their party affiliation,” Perriello said.

McGuire’s campaign didn’t respond to an interview request.

A different district than the one Perriello won

Perriello’s 2008 victory was itself a political oddity. Barack Obama’s White House victory made him the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry Virginia since 1964, starting a winning streak that has continued through the most recent national race, in 2024, and shows no signs of abating. But the 5th remained considerably more Republican than the state as a whole. Perriello in 2008 won by less than a percentage point over an incumbent Republican.

The district has since undergone a deeper partisan realignment.

Charlottesville has become more Democratic, while many rural areas have moved sharply toward Republicans. Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told the Washington Examiner that under the district lines in place in 2008, Republican presidential nominee John McCain carried the seat by about 3 points. Even as the late Arizona senator lost nationally by roughly 7.

In 2024, Trump performed about 10 points better in the district than he did nationally. That makes Perriello’s challenge different from simply recreating his old campaign, which occurred when Facebook and X (then Twitter) were in their infancy as campaign technologies, and when Trump was in the first half of his 15-season stint hosting “The Apprentice.”

Perriello has to run up the score in Charlottesville while finding voters elsewhere willing to split from increasingly nationalized partisan identities.

Perriello points to the 100 hours of town halls he held during his first congressional campaign as evidence that he knows how to compete in communities where Democrats have struggled. He also acknowledged the work required to rebuild Democratic support among black voters in smaller communities such as Danville and Lynchburg.

“There is a lot of work to be done there,” Perriello said.

Republicans argue that the Democratic case is overstated.

“Democrats are living in fantasy land if they think they can compete in VA-05, a district President Trump carried by double digits,” Emma Hall, an RNC spokeswoman, told the Washington Examiner. “Democrats’ ‘blue wave’ is imaginary, just like their war chest.”

Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center likewise said he would be surprised if Perriello made the race genuinely competitive.

“I would expect the margin to be larger than four to six points,” Olsen said.

Can the national movement overcome the map?

Democrats, however, point to recent special elections as evidence that the national environment could be strong enough to overcome the district’s Republican advantage.

Political expert Andrew Koneschusky noted that Democrats have recently outperformed Trump’s 2024 margins by double digits in several Republican-leaning districts.

“Democrats can absolutely overcome a 12-point deficit,” Koneschusky told the Washington Examiner. “They’ve already done it multiple times in recent special elections.”

Koneschusky, founder & CEO of Beltway Advisors, a public affairs and crisis communications firm, who was previously a Capitol Hill press secretary and executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party, said a 12- to 15-point Democratic overperformance in Virginia’s 5th would have implications far beyond the district, potentially putting dozens of Republican-held seats into play.

Democrats also see a broader opportunity in Virginia: The state has trended Democratic for two decades. In addition to carrying Virginia in every presidential election since Obama first flipped it, Democrats swept the three statewide offices and gained 13 seats in 2025 in the House of Delegates.

But Virginia’s statewide trajectory does not necessarily make the 5th competitive.

Kondik said a Perriello victory would be highly unusual.

“It would be out of character for this district,” Kondik said. “Republicans usually carry this district by comfortable, if not landslide, margins.”

He said a Perriello victory would likely indicate a Democratic wave large enough to produce a House majority comparable to — or larger than — the 235 seats Democrats won in 2018.

Still, Kondik cautioned against treating one congressional race as a perfect national barometer. A close race could occur even in an otherwise disappointing Democratic election, just as Perriello’s 2008 victory was an outlier.

The math of a Republican stronghold

The district’s geography gives Perriello little room for error.

“The thing I’d watch isn’t whether rural Virginia suddenly turns blue; it won’t,” Democratic strategist Jay Satterfield told the Washington Examiner. “It’s whether Democrats can shave enough off those Republican margins while generating huge turnout and margins in their strongholds.”

Perriello, therefore, does not necessarily need to turn deep-red southside Virginia blue. He needs to lose by less.

A Republican county won by 35 points instead of 45 can matter almost as much as adding votes in Charlottesville.

That is where Perriello’s history in the district could matter. He is not a generic Democratic challenger parachuting into a Republican seat. He is a former congressman who has already won it, and he is attempting to convince voters that the political coalition that carried him to Washington nearly two decades ago can still be assembled.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is betting on him, calling Perriello a “top-tier candidate” who has put the seat “squarely in play.”

McGuire, meanwhile, must demonstrate that Trump’s strength in the district translates to a midterm electorate and a congressional race centered on his own record.

A test of the 2026 map

Kondik points to other Virginia races as a useful measuring stick.

His outfit’s Crystal Ball rates suburban Hampton Roads 2nd Congressional District a toss-up. While the 1st, covering the western Chesapeake Bay and suburbs north and west of Richmond, is considered lean Republican. The 5th is deemed likely Republican.

“VA-2, a classic swing seat, is the kind of seat that Democrats should flip if they are winning the House,” Kondik said. “And if Democrats were to flip VA-5, it would likely be as part of a significantly big wave.”

That puts the 5th in an unusual category.

WHO IS DOUG OLLIVANT? MEET THE REPUBLICAN VETERAN TRYING TO FLIP ABIGAIL SPANBERGER’S OLD DISTRICT

Democrats do not necessarily need to win it to have a successful night. But the closer Perriello gets, the more the race could reveal about the reach of the national political environment.

A double-digit Republican victory would reinforce the district’s long-standing partisan character. A narrow loss would show Democrats have made substantial progress in territory that has moved sharply toward Republicans.

Barnini Chakraborty (@Barnini) is a senior political reporter at the Washington Examiner.

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