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For Your Consideration
This year Virginians will be voting for either Democrat Tim Kaine or Republican Hung Cao. The two have some similarities but a lot of differences.
Tim Kaine was born in Minnesota to a schoolteacher mother, and his father owned a welding metal fabrication business. When Kaine was 2, the family moved to Overland Park, Kansas, a rich suburb of Kansas City, Mo.
Hung Cao was born in South Vietnam and like Kaine, when he was 2 years old his family also moved but it was as refugees. His family ended up in Alexandria.
Kaine went to a private Jesuit Catholic boys school in Overland Park. C ao went to a public school and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria.
Both did exceptionally well in their high school years. Cao was appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy. Kaine went to the University of Missouri and earned a degree in economics.
Kaine went to law school at Harvard. Cao after graduation was commissioned an officer in the Navy as a special operations officer and served with a SEAL special forces team seeing action in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. He also continued his studies earning a master’s degree in physics, receiving fellowships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Harvard.
Kaine moved to the Richmond area and got elected to the city council and later mayor beginning his 30 years as a mediocre, good old boy, career politician. He was elected lietenant governor and later governor. As governor, he at first governed as a conservative, even pushing the law to create the “Chose Life” license plate and allowing funds from the sale to go to a prolife organization but later changed positions on abortion, even winning a 100 percent rating from NARAL, a group that called for no restriction at all on abortions.
Kaine is best remembered as the governor who, rather than cutting spending to get a balanced budget, closed the interstate rest area stops. (Giving rise to jokes like, “If you have to go to Virginia, make sure you don’t have to go!”) Kaine was a surprise pick by Hillary Clinton to be her vice president. He would later distance himself from the phony Steele Dossier scandal for which the Clinton-Kaine campaign was found guilty of campaign violations and heavily fined.
Kaine is best remembered for his disastrous vice president debate against Mike Pence where he seemed to be unable to stop talking and rudely interrupting over 70 times.
After 12 years in the Senate, he has not been selected to be a committee chairman nor considered a political leader like his counterpart Mark Warner, chairman of the Intelligence Committee and other leadership positions.
Regarding the two main issues of the economy and immigration, Kaine has been a backer of the Biden-Harris open border policy and known as a big spender, rarely voting to cut spending but instead supporting budget-busting bills that have led to the current high inflation.
Cao, a refugee who has put his life on the line for his country, is on record wanting to stop the mass illegal immigration. He is a strong supporter of legal immigration, not the open border policy. Cao sees the need to cut spending and regulation and end Biden’s energy policy that has dramatically added to inflation.
With the world having moved closer to conflicts that could involve the United States, Cao has a better understanding of our military, international crisis problems and proven leadership.
Kaine has the advantage of a large war chest of special interest funding and name recognition. But things have been changing in Virginia politics. Mark Warner, with a giant war chest and personal fortune, had polls showing him winning by 12 points but ended up winning by less than 1 point! Cao ran for the House seat in heavily Democrat Northern Virginia and did far better than expected while being vastly outspent by his incumbent opponent.
The high voter turnout in Northern Virginia, which seemed to control the state’s politics, got a wake-up call with the election of Glenn Younkin, Winsome Sears and Jason Miyares as the western congressional districts dramatically upped their voter turnout.
Can the more Republican western congressional districts do it again? Can Trump do better than Harris? Has the Youngkin election been the start of a political change? Are the people in Northern Virginia as upset as the rest of the state by high inflation, open borders and crime? If so, the face of politics in Virginia may change and Virginia may be the first state in the union to have a Vietnamese refugee, Naval Academy grad and SEAL special forces candidate elected to the Senate. Some questions for your consideration.
