Tom Perriello, a Democrat who represented Virginia's 5th congressional district from 2009 to 2011 and later served as U.S. special envoy for Sudan, faces Republican incumbent John McGuire for the seat in 2026.
2026 Races & Market Forecast
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- Born
- October 9, 1974
- Birthplace
- Charlottesville, Virginia
- Education
- St. Anne's-Belfield School
Yale University (BA, 1996)
Yale Law School (JD, 2001)
Biography & Campaign Analysis
Background
Tom Perriello was born on October 9, 1974, in Charlottesville, Virginia, and grew up in Ivy, an unincorporated community west of the city. His mother, Linda, was a financial analyst, and his father, Vito Anthony Perriello Jr., was a pediatrician.
After attending county public schools, he graduated from St. Anne's-Belfield School and served as a legislative page in the Virginia House of Delegates. He received a bachelor's degree in 1996 and a law degree in 2001 from Yale University.
From 2002 to 2003 he worked for the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where he became special adviser to the prosecutor, David Crane, and he later consulted for the International Center for Transitional Justice in Kosovo, Darfur and Afghanistan.
Career
Perriello entered elected office in 2008, when he defeated six-term Republican incumbent Virgil H. Goode Jr. in Virginia's 5th district by 727 votes out of more than 317,000 cast.
During his single term he sat on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, and he voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
He lost the 2010 election to Republican state senator Robert Hurt by 3.9%, and afterward served as president and CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
At the State Department, Perriello was special representative for the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review from February 2014 to July 2015 and special envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo from July 2015 to December 2016.
He sought the Democratic nomination for governor of Virginia in 2017 and lost to Ralph Northam. He then served until July 2023 as executive director for U.S. Programs at the Open Society Foundations. He was appointed special envoy for Sudan on February 26, 2024, and resigned on January 18, 2025.
2026 race
Tom Perriello announced in 2025 that he would run again for Virginia's 5th congressional district, the seat he held from 2009 to 2011.
The district takes in most of rural Southside Virginia along with Charlottesville, Danville and Lynchburg, and its incumbent is Republican John McGuire, who won it with 57.3% of the vote in 2024.
Perriello won the Democratic primary with 79.8% of the vote, ahead of a physician who took 14.5% and political commentator Robert Tracinski, who took 5.7%.
In the general election on November 3, 2026, he faces McGuire, a freshman member of the House, and independent candidate Cooke Harvey, a vocational therapist.