The monthly interview: Tom Perriello.

• Author: Longman, Martin
• Position: Interview

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For more than half a century, no politician of note has run on the issue of fighting corporate monopolies. Indeed, the very term "corporate monopoly" would have sounded almost as archaic as "free silver" coming out of the mouth of any political candidate until very recently. But that has begun to change, as the damage that industry consolidation is doing to the overall economy and the lives and livelihoods of individual Americans has become more and more apparent.

In 2014, two law professors little known to the general public, Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu, ran a quixotic primary challenge to New York's powerful governor, Andrew Cuomo, and his hand-picked candidate for lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul, in part by stressing anti-monopoly policies. Despite little money and overwhelming odds, Teachout and Wu surprisingly garnered more than a third of the vote. Then last summer, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren gave a high-profile address on the dangers of industry consolidation that we at the Washington Monthly predicted (perhaps with more hope than prescience) could "change the course of the presidential contest." It didn't, but in the final weeks of the campaign Hillary Clinton did give a speech that included similar arguments, as did Donald Trump.

The anti-monopoly idea Is now getting its most serious political road test yet by Tom Perriello, who is running for governor of Virginia. (He faces Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam in a June 13 Democratic primary.) A former diplomat and think tank scholar who hails from central Virginia, Perriello represented the state's GOP-leaning Fifth District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2009 to 2011. During his one term in Congress, he sponsored the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act, which would have eliminated an antitrust exemption that industry has enjoyed since 1945. He lost reelection after voting for Obamacare. Perriello recently spoke to Washington Monthly web editor Martin Longman. Here is an edited version of that interview.

WM: When you were in Congress, why was eliminating the health insurance industry's antitrust exemption such a priority for you?

TP: Antitrust protections for the insurance companies had been intentionally provided as a temporary stopgap and no longer have much of a justification. This was about getting back to what had been a core American principle for a long time--competition. To me, removing antitrust protection was...