RICHMOND, Va. — Retired Navy fight veteran Hung Cao, who ran an lively however unsuccessful marketing campaign final 12 months for a blue-leaning northern Virginia U.S. Home seat, has set his sights on the U.S. Senate, asserting Tuesday that he is looking for the 2024 Republican nomination to problem Democrat Tim Kaine.
A Vietnamese immigrant who spent 25 years within the Navy, together with service in fight zones world wide, Cao pledged to be a “fighter” at a time when he stated the nation had taken a “darkish flip.”
“We’re shedding our nation. it. However you additionally know you possibly can’t say it. We’re compelled to say that unsuitable is true,” he stated in a video announcement that took intention at President Joe Biden.
Cao will be part of an more and more crowded discipline of Republican contenders — not less than eight different candidates have filed paperwork — aiming to run subsequent 12 months towards Kaine, who up to now faces no main opponent.
A fixture in Virginia politics, Kaine introduced his plans to hunt a 3rd time period in January after some hypothesis he may retire. His resolution to run eased his social gathering’s worries about the opportunity of an open seat. He shall be seen as having an edge within the must-win race for Democrats dealing with a troublesome Senate map in 2024.
Though Virginia has been trending blue in latest a long time, voters elected a slate of Republican statewide officers in 2021.
Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential operating mate in 2016, has been in public workplace for practically three a long time, serving as Richmond’s mayor and later because the state’s lieutenant governor and governor. He was first elected to the Senate in 2012 and handily defeated a far-right challenger in 2018.
Cao graduated from the distinguished Thomas Jefferson Excessive College for Science and Know-how in Alexandria earlier than attending the United States Naval Academy. He was commissioned as a particular operations officer and went on to serve with SEAL groups and particular forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia earlier than retiring on the rank of captain, in response to his marketing campaign biography. He additionally earned a masters diploma in physics and attended fellowships on the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how and Harvard College. He lives in Purcellville in northern Virginia together with his spouse, April, and their 5 kids.
In his marketing campaign announcement, Cao stated his household fled Vietnam within the Nineteen Seventies and spent just a few years in Africa earlier than immigrating to the U.S., “probably the most beneficiant nation on Earth.”
With out mentioning Kaine, Cao pledged to sort out the problems of unlawful immigration, the unfold of fentanyl and crime “destroying our cities and communities” whereas criticizing what he characterised because the politicization of the Justice Division, together with the indictment of former President Donald Trump.
“I have been everywhere in the world. Imagine me once I inform you: If America fails, there’s nowhere else to go,” he stated.
In an announcement that highlighted coverage positions Cao staked out in his run towards Jennifer Wexton, Virginia Democrats referred to as him a “failed candidate” and “anti-choice extremist” who is simply too far proper to enchantment to the state’s voters. They famous that he celebrated information of the Supreme Courtroom’s resolution to overturn Roe v. Wade and questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election in an interview with an area information outlet. Cao additionally expressed opposition to help for Ukraine in his run final 12 months.
“Voters in Virginia’s tenth Congressional District already rejected Hung Cao in his bid for the U.S. Home, and I can guarantee you he’s too excessive for the U.S. Senate,” Democratic Occasion of Virginia Chairwoman Susan Swecker stated in an announcement.
The assertion additionally stated that given the scale of the sector, Republicans had been headed for a “messy and brutal main.”
Kaine’s marketing campaign introduced final week elevating over $2 million within the 12 months’s second quarter and ending the interval with $6.3 million money readily available — about $5.7 million greater than the entire GOP discipline mixed, in response to marketing campaign finance information.
Kaine seems to be ahead to “operating on his file of delivering for hardworking Virginians towards anybody which will win the GOP nomination subsequent 12 months,” marketing campaign spokesperson Arif Hasan stated in an announcement Tuesday.
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