Few congressional candidates anywhere have put artificial intelligence at the center of a campaign the way Tom Perriello has in Virginia’s Fifth District. The Democrat, running against incumbent Republican John McGuire, has published a full policy page, titled AI on Our Terms, and the argument it makes is unusually blunt: no company, simply for owning history’s most powerful technology, thereby earns the right to own humanity itself, or to endanger American democracy.
Strategically, the page treats AI not as one issue but as several wearing a single name. Where Silicon Valley and Washington debate AI as a distinct phenomenon, Perriello argues, most Americans meet it as an accelerant of older forces — job automation, children’s screen addiction, the erosion of privacy — layered onto state surveillance, wealth concentration and climate strain. The country needs a national AI strategy, he writes — better still an international one — and it needs one fast.
The Preemption Fight
The sharpest edge of the position is procedural. Perriello attacks the policy known as federal preemption, under which Washington would bar red and blue states alike from setting their own AI guardrails and liability rules even while the federal government puts nothing in their place. His summary is pointed: “The people building AI are begging to be regulated. Washington’s answer is to block the states from doing it.” He also warns that Big Tech has built a war chest above $100 million aimed at the midterm elections, targeting candidates who demand AI safety while bankrolling those offering a blank check.
His moral touchstone is unexpected: Pope Leo, whose first major papal letter he cites, wrote that “Technology is never neutral. It takes on the character of the people who build it, pay for it, and write the rules for it.” Perriello’s own pledge is that “it is an urgent and top priority to establish federal guardrails and liability , ideally on a bipartisan basis, to protect people from the most powerful product humans have ever created.”
The Action Plan
The policy program runs across four fronts. National ground rules would aim to minimize existential risks while rewarding full human employment — with Perriello citing warnings that over half of American jobs could be eliminated or disrupted within years, and promising to rewrite a 20th century tax code that currently rewards automating people out of work. On children: nearly nine of every ten kids now use AI, over four in ten report no parent has ever raised AI safety with them, and he would shift the burden onto the companies — requiring age limits, warnings stated clearly, and liability when harms were reasonably foreseeable. On elections: AI-made ads should be labeled, faked candidate voices taken down fast or penalized, and the dark-money flood ended. On government itself: no computer denying benefits, deciding prison sentences or choosing who gets care — and no drone making kill decisions. Every such decision must trace back to a named human being.
The race’s other front is healthcare. At a late-August Charlottesville event with Representative Jennifer McClellan, documented by Blue Virginia, Perriello needled his opponent’s absence: “I’m surprised John McGuire didn’t join me in Charlottesville yesterday along with a room full of community members. We were talking about his vote to gut our healthcare and how he and RFK Jr. want AI chatbots replacing doctors and denying care until you are about to die.” Organizers tied the moment to what they described as $1 trillion in federal health care cuts McGuire voted for.
What this signals is a shift in the calculus of tech politics. A candidate once mocked for policy earnestness now campaigns on guardrails and liability, refuses corporate PAC money, and treats AI safety as a vote-winner rather than a liability. Whether the Fifth District agrees will be decided in November. The broader lesson is already visible: AI has left the seminar room and entered the stump speech.
Sources
- AI — Tom Perriello for Congress
- Video: VA05 Dem Nominee Tom Perriello Says Far-Right Rep. John McGuire (R-VA05) and RFK Jr. "want AI chatbots replacing doctors and denying care until you are about to die" – Blue Virginia
