As a Democrat competing against a Republican incumbent in a traditionally conservative district, Meredith Richards will have her work cut out for her come November.
In a campaign that pits her against incumbent Republican Rep. Virgil Goode, for Virginia's Fifth District seat in Congress, Richards said she is focusing on bolstering the area's economy.
After the region's textile and furniture industries crumbled in the last decade, the district's citizens have seen a sharp increase in unemployment.
"We're having a crisis in the southern part in terms of unemployment and loss of economic life," Richards said. "My approach is to tell people they're not being helped. They need a new economy, they need new jobs."
Meanwhile, Goode also has set his sight on creating and preserving jobs in the Fifth District. As part of that goal, he's looking to attract business to the area by overhauling the region's transportation system, especially in helping the southern district improve its airports and expand its educational opportunities.
"We've been working hard in this campaign, and I expect to have a heated race," Goode said.
A member of Charlottesville's City Council, Richards plans to spend most of her summer campaigning across the 17-county district in an effort to educate voters.
As part of her effort to revamp the region's lagging economy, Richards aims to build its infrastructure and bring a technologically-based economy into the southern district as a way to lure new business and create much-needed jobs.
"We've done it in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area, but [the district] needs someone who focuses on it and makes it a priority," Richards said.
Gov. Mark R. Warner "has done more in the last six months to help the district than Virgil Goode has done in the past six years," she said.
Goode also has targeted the economic needs of the Fifth District. In May he released a statement advertising his support of the 2001 tax cuts, which the House voted to make permanent by a vote of 229-198.
Richards said her approach also includes drawing on the area's strengths to develop a better tourism industry as well as re-training workers for the economy's shift to technology.
Beyond restructuring the district's economy, Richards said she is opposed to current Capitol Hill talks that would privatize social security and wants to improve health care benefits for more affordable prescription drugs, both of which would have profound effects on the area's large retired population.
"This campaign is about working families, jobs, opportunity and hope for the future," she said.
Despite her enthusiasm for the area and vision for its future, Richards may have difficulty in defeating the incumbent Goode for the House seat.
"This is a classic Republican versus Democrat contest," Politics Prof. Larry J. Sabato said. "The incumbent is a newly switched, mainstream conservative member of the GOP House caucus, and the Democratic challenger is a mainstream moderate-liberal to liberal nominee."
With the Fifth District consisting of about 60 percent to 65 percent conservative voters and nearly 55 percent registered Republicans, Goode typically secures about 60 percent of the vote each election, Sabato said.
"Meredith Richards will have to spend a great deal of money and come up with some sure-fire issues to have a real chance of winning," he said.
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