CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – Tom Perriello won a seat in Congress the first time because of hope and change. This time, he might win one because of anger and despair.

Perriello, who in 2008 was a boyish 34-year-old Yale-educated security consultant, epitomized much of the last peak of Democratic power. He won Virginia’s heavily Republican 5th District by echoing Barack Obama’s aspirational and bipartisan rhetoric as the then-Illinois senator ascended to the presidency.

“There’s a deeper sense in the United States that we’ve lost a sense of the common good, a sense that we’re in this together,” he lamented to a reporter during the early stages of that contest. He would tell voters the country needed to “explode the existing spectrum of right to left that has been paralyzing us for years.”

As he tries to win the same district 18 years later, Perriello — now a veteran of liberal think tanks and foundations, a failed gubernatorial bid and two stints as a special envoy in the State Department who remains as boyish as a bearded 52-year-old possibly can be — openly acknowledges hope is now background noise at best.

Anger at what a Republican president has done, not excitement about the change a Democratic president might bring, could give him the chance to flip the seat held by first-term Republican Rep. John McGuire.

“The speed of people turning on Trump and the people that are enabling him in a district like this has been phenomenal to watch over the last 10 months,” Perriello told HuffPost in an interview. “So many conservatives and independents in this district feel like the current leadership in Washington is indefensible.”

Perriello predicted this year’s blue wave will “probably be larger” than what happened in 2008, when the party followed up the 2006 wave by picking up eight Senate and 21 House seats as Obama won 365 electoral college votes.

But the path to victory is still tricky.

The district, which covers Southside Virginia, is red enough that Perriello was tossed out after a single term, and Republicans have held the seat ever since; it voted for President Donald Trump by a 12-point margin just two years ago.

The race has yet to attract the millions of dollars of television ads which signal it’s part of the core battleground for the House — though the Trump-aligned super PAC No Going Back has spent $260,000 on mailers boosting McGuire and attacking Perriello — and McGuire does not seem to be making the panicked moves of other suddenly endangered incumbents.

His district includes both Lynchburg and Liberty University, a conservative evangelical stronghold where he recently spent the morning attending convocation alongside McGuire, and the University of Virginia, a progressive bastion by comparison. He sought the endorsement of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), a progressive many Democrats in Trump-won areas typically avoid, to help juice student turnout.

Drowning in political campaign mailers, calls and text messages ahead of the midterm elections? Tell us about it ― and share a photo or screenshot of what you’re getting: jen.bendery@huffpost.com

To win, Perriello thinks, he’ll have to figure out how to use voters’ anger to move past the district’s dividing lines of college vs. non-college and urban vs. rural, as Obama’s rhetoric about “hope and change” did nearly two decades ago.

Voter anger over gas prices, which also lifted Perriello in the 2008 campaign, is joined by frustration with rising healthcare costs. He notes 11 of the district’s 21 counties do not have a practicing OB-GYN.

“When you’re having to drive a couple of hours to get healthcare at $4.25 a gallon, that’s a life-altering cost,” he said.

Underneath concerns about high prices, data center development and the arrival of artificial intelligence, he sees the potential for new coalitions — maybe ones based on something more than frustration.

“I think there’s a chance this is going to be the first election of the post-Trump era,” Perriello said, pointing to opposition to the war and to the Valley Link Transmission Line project, a hot issue in the district’s rural areas. “I see the seeds of a new political coalition across this district.”

This could include people like Richard Fox, who owns a farm on the outskirts of this university town where Perriello campaigned last week, launching his “Farmers For Perriello” coalition with a press event briefly interrupted by the sound of one of Fox’s 300 head of cattle evacuating its bowels.

Fox’s family has lived in Albemarle County since the 1700s, and he neatly ticks off the price hikes cutting into his profit margins: an 80% hike in the price of diesel since the start of the Iran war, fertilizer prices “significantly” higher than last year, tariffs making equipment purchases cost thousands of dollars more.

In an interview, Fox pointed a finger squarely at McGuire, arguing his unwillingness to stand up to Trump is hurting the district’s typically conservative farmers.

“All he’ll say is that he’s listening to farmers and taking what they say back to D.C. Great. What are you hearing in that conversation? Are you willing to go against the president?” Fox said. “That’s been the biggest problem: He’s just a rubber stamp. No matter what, he’s just going to go along with the president.”

Indeed, McGuire does not appear to be running from his relationship with the president. A picture of himself alongside Trump is still near the top of his campaign website, which does not appear to have been recently updated — it also touts the endorsement of Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), who faces accusations of domestic and child abuse.

McGuire did not respond to a request for comment.

But it’s still hard to predict how many voters will buck the status quo this time around — it’s harder to reach across the partisan divide than it was 18 years ago, Perriello said.

“People became more polarized,” he said. “You’ve seen the erosion of local media. There are a lot of forums like chambers of commerce that used to have both candidates in, and now those places just don’t want to be involved in politics.”

Perriello initially entered the race when Democrats planned on re-drawing the state’s congressional lines, and possibly would’ve waltzed into a safely Democratic seat instead of waging an uphill battle for a Trump-won seat. But he stuck in the race after the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the redrawn lines because he hoped to stop looming Medicaid cuts and the Iran war.

“I’m not in this to win an election,” he said. “I’ve already got a lapel pin.”

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