CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – In 2008, Tom Perriello became the last Democrat to win a race to represent Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. Now, 17 years later, he’s making another run for that seat, and leaning into the lessons he learned from that successful campaign.

“We knew we weren’t going to win every county across an enormous part of central and southside Virginia, but it was our goal to over-perform in every county,” Perriello told Cville Right Now this week. “We were gonna show up everywhere. We were gonna talk to everyone and listen, and whether or not folks agreed with me on every issue, they were gonna know that I would show up and I would fight for them in Washington.”

That’s something he said voters aren’t seeing from their current representative, Republican John McGuire.

Perriello officially launched his candidacy a week ago, immediately prompting three other contenders for the post – Adele Stichel, Paul Wiley and Katie Zabriskie – to drop out and endorse him.

Perriello promptly raised over $400,000 in the first 48 hours of his campaign, held a jam-packed launch event at a Charlottesville brewery and picked up high-profile endorsements from Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and former Governor Ralph Northam.

Perriello made it clear, as he pursues a chance to unseat Republican John McGuire, he’ll be using much of the same anti-Trump playbook that helped carry Democrats to a sweep of the statewide races for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general and to flip 13 seats in the House of Delegates.

“We’re just seeing way too many people around central and south side Virginia struggling to make ends meet,” Perriello said “The cost of everything is going up, from groceries, to healthcare, to childcare, and it’s not a coincidence. It’s because McGuire and this Congress are allowing things like these reckless tariffs to take money straight out of the pocket of everyday folks, who are working hard to try to support their families and that money is helping Trump have leverage, to go to other countries. And what’s he doing with it? He’s getting crypto kickbacks for his kids instead of trying to focus on things that are going to bring good paying jobs back to the United States. So, I think people here are just really frustrated.

“We’ve seen that people are starting to regret some of what they voted for, who voted for the current Congress. And that means there’s an opportunity not just to go up and stand against some of these attacks on the middle class, but to actually build some coalitions that could help us figure out how to make our communities more affordable again.”

Perriello, who still must navigate a Democratic primary field that includes Albemarle Board of Supervisors member Mike Pruitt, said that whether or not redistricting efforts help make the 5th District more favorable for his path, he believes he has a message that will appear to a wide swath of voters.

“What I can tell you is this, whether I go north, south, east or west, people are saying the same thing,” said Perriello, who has worked domestically and overseas for the Obama and Biden administrations. “Healthcare costs too much. Childcare costs too much. The electric bills are through the roof and they don’t feel like their representatives in Washington give a crap about fighting to help their families.”

Perriello said in the years since he left office he’s worked in the non-profit sector, occasionally dabbling in politics, as he’s continued to fight for an increase in the minimum wage, affordable access to the internet, protections for rural hospitals and better benefits for veterans, all issues that should resonate to parts of the current 5th District outside of Charlottesville.

“When we think about affordability, that’s something I’ve been working on for 25 years,” Perriello said. “It’s time to step in and stand up to some of the cruelty but also put stakeholders together to come up with a plan that’s going to bring down costs.”

Perriello’s tenure in Congress may be best remembered for his key vote in the House’s 2009 passage of the Affordable Care Act, a bill that cleared the house by just five votes, before easily passing in the Senate and being signed into law by former President Barack Obama.

This week, Perriello expressed frustration that more progress hasn’t been made in reducing healthcare costs since then.

“I was proud to pass the deciding vote for the Affordable Care Act, but that was just meant to be the start,” Perriello said. “We did some good things with it in terms of young people being able to stay on their family plan till 26. I’m on Obamacare because many of us when we go through periods of starting a business or self employment, have that flexibility. People can’t get kicked off of their healthcare plan just because they get sick. Young families being able to know that pre- and post-natal care will be covered. These were good things to do in the Affordable Care Act. Along with the programs that have helped keep our rural hospitals open. But obviously we need to move towards universal healthcare that’s affordable and we need to be building on that foundation to make the system work.”

In the wake of Saturday’s mass shooting at Brown University, Perriello also re-upped his calls for commonsense gun law reforms, an issue he championed during his first term in Congress and in the years since.

“This is something I’ve been fighting for for a number of years,” Perriello said. “This just should be a common sense issue, whether it’s the automatic weapons or the high-capacity magazines. We have already seen a generation of young people normalized to this kind of atrocity.”

In his 2008 bid, Perriello said he overcame an early 36% deficit in the polls and wound up outperforming the Democratic party’s showing in the next presidential-year election by 12-points.

“What I took away from that most of all is, the best ideas come from listening,” Perriello said. “And my job as a representative is not to have the answer to every problem, but to listen to the folks that I want to represent. The attack ads fade, but that impact on our neighbors remains. And that’s why it’s worth it to get back into what’s a pretty nasty business, to try to make a little bit of a difference for people that are working so hard for their own families.”