Republican Cao Looks to Reverse GOP Senate Fortunes in Old Dominion

In recent weeks, polls showing former President Donald Trump in contention to win Virginia this November have generated serious media buzz. However, Republican Senate nominee Hung Cao has so far failed to see similar momentum in the Old Dominion in his bid to unseat Democrat incumbent Tim Kaine. But with three months to go until Election Day, Cao still has time to close the gap.

According to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average, Kaine is leading Cao by about 12 points. While it would indeed be a daunting task for Cao to overtake Kaine by November 5, it’s worth noting that Kaine is hovering at just above 50 percent support, while Cao is polling at 37.7 percent – perhaps indicating that the Republican nominee has ample opportunity to gain ground.

Cao’s personal story should be one that has broad appeal for voters. His family arrived in the United States after fleeing communist oppression in Vietnam in 1975. He spent most of his childhood in Virginia, graduating as part of the inaugural class from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology – now widely recognized as one of the top high schools in the country.

During a chilling speech at the RNC Convention in Milwaukee earlier this summer, Cao drew on his family’s story to warn about the growing authoritarian impulses of the modern Democrat Party. He began his remarks by banging three times on the podium and saying, “That’s the last sound my parents heard when their fathers were taken away in the middle of the night, and they never saw them again.” He went on to explain how many Americans are now hearing the same sort of knock on their door amid the Biden administration’s weaponization of the federal government.

After high school, Cao earned admission to the Naval Academy and later served on special operations units in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. He received his Masters degree in physics from the Naval Postgraduate School and earned fellowships at MIT and Harvard. He and his wife April have five children.

Cao also reflected on his military service during his RNC speech. “I love this country so much that I wrote a blank check up to and including my life,” he said. However, he continued, “We are losing our country. Under Joe Biden, millions of illegal aliens flood our borders. They fly Hamas flags on our campuses and they shout death to America. As an immigrant to this great country, let me be very clear to everyone who comes here: Don’t ask for the American Dream if you are not willing to obey American laws and embrace American culture.”

In 2021, Cao announced that he would be challenging Democrat Jennifer Wexton for Virginia’s 10th Congressional District. He cruised to victory in a crowded 11-candidate GOP primary field, but lost to Wexton 53.2 percent to 46.7 percent in November.

However, Cao did cut into Wexton’s margins of victory from 2020 and 2018, where she earned 56.1 percent and 56.5 percent of the vote, respectively. Despite a disappointing result, many Virginia Republicans felt at the time that Cao could have a bright political future.

Cao carried that momentum over to a bid for Tim Kaine’s U.S. Senate seat this year. He again easily won a Republican primary in June, carrying 61.8 percent of the vote.

Cao has made national security and foreign policy issues a pillar of his campaign, leaning on his experiences in the Navy. He has also become an outspoken critic of the Biden-Harris administration’s border policy, repeatedly blasting Kaine as a chief enabler of it. At the RNC Convention, Cao called Kaine “a weak man in a dangerous world.”

In addition to being weak, Kaine also has a record of radical votes that could create effective attack lines against him despite his best efforts to sell himself to voters as a pragmatic moderate. For instance, he provided key votes in favor of the woefully misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” and has helped Democrats usher through hundreds of left-wing partisan judges over the past four years.

Kaine was sufficiently liberal, in fact, to become Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016 – another detail that Republicans should not let voters forget. The Washington Post described his record in the Senate as “largely progressive,” and he has voted in line with his party more than 90 percent of the time. Serious questions also remain about Kaine’s potential involvement with radical left-wing political groups in Latin America in the 1980s.

Cao’s task will be ensuring that voters know all of these facts before they cast their ballots. With the corporate media now fully mobilizing behind Kaine and other Democrats, it will be up to Cao’s campaign and Republican surrogates to break through the information firewall.

Trump’s competitiveness in Virginia could be one major X factor that might change the race in the final weeks. If polls continue to show Trump within striking distance, the former president’s campaign would likely hold a number of rallies there where Cao would almost surely be prominently featured – an invaluable opportunity to boost his support.

In previous cycles where Republicans have won big majorities in Congress, it has been through expanding the map by highlighting Democrats’ extremist voting records. Although history and current trends may not be on Hung Cao’s side, there may yet be opportunity for the GOP to deploy that same tried and true strategy in Virginia this year.

B.C. Brutus is the pen name of a writer with previous experience in the legislative and executive branches.