Former Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. will not run for the 5th District congressional seat that he lost last year. In a news release, Goode gave no reason for why he chose not to run in 2010 but said he hopes Republicans will nominate a conservative to run for the seat. Democrat Tom Perriello of Albemarle County upset Goode last year in a tight contest. Perriello won by 727 votes out of more than 300,000 cast.

University of Virginia employees were among the top contributors to freshman Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. U.Va. employees gave Perriello $26,679 for his campaign to unseat Republican Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. in the 5th District, according to data compiled by the center. Perriello, who was a lecturer for one seminar at U.Va.‘s law school in 2007, had a victory margin of 727 votes after a recount.

The end of a political era is coming Friday to Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. That’s the day U.S. Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. will step down after 14 years on Capitol Hill and Rep.-elect Tom Perriello of Albemarle County will take his place. Goode, who lives in Rocky Mount, has represented his part of Virginia on the state and federal levels. He was an independent then a Democrat in the state Senate, before shifting back to an independent and finally becoming a member of the Republican Party during his time in Congress.

Attorneys for Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., R-5th, filed a petition yesterday to recount the 316,862 votes cast in the Nov. 4 election between Goode and Democrat Tom S.P. Perriello. Goode, a six-term incumbent, filed the petition in Albemarle County Circuit Court. The recount, which was announced Monday, is expected to wrap up sometime next month.

Times-Dispatch Staff Writers Virginia’s congressional majority hangs in the balance in the 5th District, where Republican incumbent Virgil H. Goode Jr. will seek a recount of results showing him trailing Democratic challenger Tom S.P. Perriello by 745 votes. The State Board of Elections yesterday certified that Perriello won by 0.24 of a percentage point out of nearly 317,000 votes cast.

When he burst on the political scene about 15 months ago, Tom Perriello appeared to be the same kind of run-to-lose candidate whom Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. easily dispatched before. Perriello, a 33-year-old security adviser with an Ivy League education, had no real retail political experience and was virtually unknown in the larger portion of the 5th Congressional District. And Perriello hailed from the Charlottesville area, considered the most liberal bastion of the largely conservative and rural district. He seemed to be the perfect fit for Goode to successfully portray as a “New York lawyer,“ one of the predominant themes Goode pushed during the campaign.

Her re-election chances resting on uncounted absentee ballots, Rep. Thelma Drake, R-2nd, has joined the McCain-Palin campaign in a lawsuit seeking to count absentee ballots by military personnel serving overseas. Drake, a Republican, trails Democrat Glenn C. Nye III by 7,916 votes in the district in and around Virginia Beach. Nye has claimed victory, but Drake has not conceded because she says the count of the district’s 28,000 absentee ballots continued yesterday.

Times-Dispatch Staff Writers The undecided congressional race in Virginia’s 5th District is such a squeaker that yesterday’s constantly fluctuating vote totals alternately made each candidate a winner—for a while. As it stands today, Republican incumbent Virgil H. Goode Jr. is behind, and the contest, one of the tightest races in the nation, appears headed for a request for a recount.