For several months the Home Page of this website featured a forlorn notice:

2012 Elections ...
U.S. House of Representatives ...
Democrats: No announced candidate.

No more.

Peyton Williams, Jr. of Charlottesville will soon announce his candidacy for the Democratic nomination to oppose Robert Hurt (R-Chatham) next November. You may recall that Hurt defeated Democrat Tom Perriello in 2010.

News accounts tell us that Williams has degrees in research methodology and in strategic intelligence, and has also studied ecology and worked in that field. Williams retired from the Army in 1999 as a lieutenant colonel in Special Forces and from Lockheed Martin in 2010 as a systems engineer.

He is a Scuba instructor, and has been active with Boy Scouts for many years.

He describes himself as a political moderate who will seek to work with both sides of the aisle in Congress.

(Dave Sagarin, January 30, 2012)