Fifth District Voters Should Hear All Hopefuls

Only if you’ve been living beneath a rock for the past 18 months would you not know there’s a congressional election coming up this November.

The 2010 midterm elections, in which all 435 members of the House of Representatives and a third of the U.S. senators are up for re-election, are shaping up to be the most important in a generation. And one of the marque races is right here in Central and Southside Virginia in the Fifth Congressional District, pitting freshman Rep. Tom Perriello, a Democrat, against two challengers, state Sen. Robert Hurt, a Republican, and Jeff Clark, a Danville businessman and independent.

In 2008, Perriello knocked off incumbent Rep. Virgil Goode, a Republican, by fewer than 800 votes in one of that year’s closest elections. As a result, he’s got a big, red bulls-eye painted on his back as one of the most endangered members of Congress facing re-election.

Interest in the contest, both in the district and nationally, has been intense. The national parties have poured money into the coffers of their candidates and the groups fighting for them.

Perriello has the advantage of the incumbency on his side, and he’s been busy since Day One doling out dollars in the district; $30 million for a new bridge in Danville and $12 million for wastewater treatment system upgrade in Halifax County are just two of the most recent. He’s also got more than $1.5 million in the bank to spend this fall for his re-election.

Hurt is equally well-endowed with state and national Republican groups ready to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into his effort to unseat Perriello.

And then there’s Clark, an independent making his first run for elective office. He collected more than the required 2,000 signatures to get on the November ballot and says he’s running because he wants to have the opportunity to vote for strong, ideologically pure conservative.

Voters have a stark choice … Hurt and Perriello are strong, well-spoken advocates of their respective political philosophies. With each of them, you know exactly where they stand.

Which makes the campaign efforts they’ve been running thus far rather exasperating.

Both the Hurt and Perriello camps have been conducting a war of news releases, arguing over whose campaign donations are more tainted, who is distorting the other’s record more, who is the greater threat to the American way of life (only a slight exaggeration of news release claims).

One thing they’re not doing is standing in the public square, participating in televised, district-wide debates to speak to voters as to where they stand on the issues of the day. Why? Because they can’t agree on whether Clark belongs on stage with them.

Hurt is the more exasperating of the two because, conventional wisdom goes, he has more to lose in three-way debates. Clark, prior to the June Republican primary, said Hurt was the only candidate of the seven hopefuls he couldn’t support because he wasn’t conservative enough. He’s also said, on several occasions, that it would be better for Perriello to win another term than to send another wishy-washy Republican to Congress.

Understandably, Hurt’s not exactly a fan of Clark’s. He’s consistently fought attempts by debate organizers to include all three candidates; he simply doesn’t want to legitimize Clarke’s efforts and wants to portray the race as a contest only between Perriello and himself.

Perriello has been just as difficult to pin down on the question of debates and who should participate. First, he’s in favor of two-way debates, then three-way debates, then back again to two-way. Or he favors a two-way debate at this locale but a three-way debate at that locale.

We’ve got some simple advice for both men: Stop it! Start behaving like adults … and soon.

Fifth District voters deserve to see all three candidates on stage, simultaneously, taking questions and debating the issues that deeply concern the electorate.

Anything less is a disservice to the residents of the district.