A New Breed of Congressman

Democratic strategists and other analysts note that Perriello got an early start in setting up offices in the district's rural parts and that there were tens of thousands of newly registered voters. They also point to Goode's widely reported comments in 2006, when he strongly suggested that he wanted Muslims out of Congress and said he feared that the nation's Muslim population would rise if the country did not adopt more exclusive immigration policies.

Fred Hudson, the district's Democratic Party chairman, said voters felt that Goode, who first won the seat in 1996 as a Democrat, had moved too far to the right. "They felt, 'This guy's getting to be embarrassing,' " Hudson said.

Goode did not respond to a message left with his wife yesterday.

Perriello grew up just outside Charlottesville in Albermarle County, where his father, Vito Perriello, is a well-known pediatrician who recently retired. In high school, Perriello joined his father on a volunteer trip to Honduras, helping to provide medical care in poor communities.

After graduating from Yale in 1996, Perriello worked for various environmental nonprofit organizations. He then went back to Yale for a law degree. Afterward, he turned down a consulting job at McKinsey & Co. and began working in Sierra Leone through a fellowship sponsored partly by Yale. He eventually got a job as a special adviser to the prosecutor trying Liberian dictator Charles Taylor.

He returned to the United States in late 2003, helped start some religious-based nonprofits and worked as a security consultant in Afghanistan. Inspired by James Webb's improbable 2006 victory over Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), Perriello decided to run for Congress.

"A number of my colleagues -- 'newly electeds' -- served in the Peace Corps, worked for charter schools and were part of affordable-housing nonprofits. I see a lot of that in the new members," Perriello said. "I call us the Service Generation. What's changed is we've gone from being the community service generation to the public service generation."

Yesterday, Perriello, with a morning fix of Diet Dr. Pepper and a chicken biscuit, scrambled around Capitol Hill like a giddy student. As he was en route to pick up his congressional identification and pins, a security officer tried halting him as he bypassed monitors meant for visitors.

Finally, his parents, Vito and Linda, came, bearing homemade cookies. As the three Perriellos waited for the elevator, the doors opened and a young woman recognized the young congressman. "I talked to you on Facebook!" she said, extending her hand for a shake. Perriello was blushing.