Representative Virgil H. Goode

Virgil Hamlin Goode Jr. (born October 17, 1946) is an American politician who represented Virginia’s 5th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from January 3, 1997, to January 3, 2009. Over six terms in Congress, he served during a significant period in American history and participated actively in the legislative process, representing the interests of his constituents. Initially elected as a Democrat, he became an independent in 2000 and formally joined the Republican Party in 2002, ultimately becoming the first Republican to represent the 5th District since 1889. In 2012, he was the presidential nominee of the Constitution Party, receiving 122,388 votes, or 0.09 percent of the national total.

Goode was born in Richmond, Virginia, the son of Alice Clara (née Besecker) and Virgil Hamlin Goode Sr. Although born in the state capital, he spent most of his life in Rocky Mount, in Franklin County, south of Roanoke. Public service was a strong tradition in his family. His father served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1940 to 1948 and as commonwealth’s attorney of Franklin County from 1948 to 1972. Between them, father and son represented Franklin County at the local, state, or federal level with only one year’s interruption from 1940 to 2009, creating an almost unbroken line of political representation spanning nearly seven decades.

Goode attended the University of Richmond, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He went on to earn a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law. During his university years he was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. In addition to his academic pursuits, Goode served in the Army National Guard from 1969 to 1975, combining legal training with military service early in his adult life before embarking on a long political career.

Goode grew up as a Democrat and entered politics soon after completing law school. At age 27, he won a special election to the Virginia State Senate from a Southside district as an independent following the death of long-serving Democratic incumbent William F. Stone. One of his major campaign themes in that race was advocacy for the Equal Rights Amendment. Shortly after his election he joined the Democratic Party. Even as a Democrat, Goode was considered very conservative by the standards of Virginia Democrats at the time and maintained a loose attachment to party leadership. He was a strong supporter of the tobacco industry, once expressing concern that his elderly mother might be denied “the one last pleasure” of smoking a cigarette on her hospital deathbed. He was also an ardent defender of gun rights. At the same time, he enthusiastically supported L. Douglas Wilder, nominating Wilder for lieutenant governor at the 1985 state Democratic convention; Wilder later became the first elected Black governor of Virginia, though as governor he pursued policies, including a crackdown on gun sales, that conflicted with Goode’s positions. After the 1995 elections produced a 20–20 split in the Virginia Senate, Goode seriously considered siding with Republicans on organizing the chamber, an action that forced Democrats to share power with Republicans and further strained his relationship with his own party. During this period he also sought higher office, running unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate twice: first when independent Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr. retired, a contest in which Goode received about 8 percent of the vote at the Democratic nominating convention won by Lieutenant Governor Richard Joseph Davis, and again in 1994, when he challenged incumbent Democratic Senator Chuck Robb in the primary and lost by a margin of 58 percent to 34 percent.

When Democratic U.S. Representative L. F. Payne decided to retire from Virginia’s 5th congressional district in 1996, Goode sought and won the Democratic nomination to succeed him. His long-held state senate district was largely coextensive with the southern portion of the congressional district, giving him a strong base of support. In the general election he defeated Republican attorney George Landrith by 61 percent to 36 percent and entered the U.S. House of Representatives on January 3, 1997. He was reelected without opposition in 1998. During this early period in Congress, Goode continued to cultivate a reputation as a conservative Democrat closely aligned with the interests and values of his largely rural and small-town constituency, emphasizing issues such as support for agriculture, tobacco, and gun rights.

In 2000, prior to that year’s congressional election, Goode left the Democratic Party and ran for reelection as an independent, portraying himself as a congressman “as independent as the people he serves.” He won a third term with 67 percent of the vote, demonstrating his personal popularity in the district. During the 2001 congressional redistricting process, he worked with Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte and Democratic Representative Rick Boucher to ensure that none of their districts were combined, a significant consideration because his home in Franklin County lay only about 20 miles south of Goodlatte’s home in Roanoke, the center of the 6th District, while the counties to the west of Franklin County were in Boucher’s 9th District, which needed to expand due to slower population growth. In August 2002, Goode formally joined the Republican Party. That fall he secured the Republican nomination and won reelection to a fourth term with 63 percent of the vote, becoming the first Republican to represent the 5th District since the nineteenth century. He continued to consolidate his position, winning a fifth term in 2004 with 64 percent of the vote against Vietnam War veteran and businessman Al Weed, and a sixth term in 2006 with 59 percent of the vote in a rematch against Weed.

Goode’s congressional service from 1997 to 2009 coincided with major national events, including the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Throughout this period, he participated in the democratic process as a member of the House of Representatives, contributing to legislative deliberations and representing the interests of his Virginia constituents. His voting record and public positions reflected his long-standing conservative orientation on social and fiscal issues, as well as his advocacy for rural communities, veterans, and traditional industries in his district. Despite his party shifts—from Democrat to independent to Republican—he maintained a consistent emphasis on states’ rights, gun ownership, and limited federal government, aligning himself with the more conservative wing of the House.

In the 2008 election, Goode was narrowly defeated in his bid for a seventh term by Democrat Tom Perriello. The race was one of the closest in the country, with Perriello prevailing by 727 votes out of more than 316,000 cast, a margin of 0.24 percent. Goode carried 13 of the district’s 20 counties and independent cities and largely held his own in the strongly conservative southwestern areas that he had represented in one capacity or another for 35 years. However, he won only one independent city, Bedford, and by just 16 votes. The outcome was ultimately decided in the more urbanized parts of the district, particularly the Charlottesville area—Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County—where Perriello, a native of the area, built a combined margin of about 19,000 votes that offset Goode’s strength elsewhere. His defeat ended his continuous service in elective office at the state and federal levels that had begun in the early 1970s.

After leaving Congress, Goode remained active in national politics. In 2012, he became the presidential nominee of the Constitution Party, a minor party emphasizing strict constitutionalism, limited federal power, and socially conservative positions. In the general election he received 122,388 votes nationwide, amounting to 0.09 percent of the total vote. Though unsuccessful, his candidacy reflected his long-standing ideological commitments and his continued engagement with public affairs following his congressional career.