Hung Cao, the retired Navy combat veteran who came to the United States in 1975 as a young refugee from Vietnam, entered the GOP primary race to challenge incumbent Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) on Tuesday.
Cao was the Republican nominee for Virginia's 10th Congressional District in last year's midterm elections, unsuccessfully going up against Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA). The Vietnamese immigrant, who served with SEAL teams and U.S. Special Forces around the world in his 25 years in uniform, dropped a campaign video on social media where he pledged to be a "fighter" against the socialist and communist tendencies that his family fled from.
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“We are losing our country. You know it. But you also know you can’t say it," Cao said in the video, which focused heavily on President Joe Biden. "We’re forced to say that wrong is right."
The retired Navy captain filed his statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission earlier this month.
Cao is the 10th Republican to jump at the chance to challenge Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s 2016 vice presidential running mate and has been in office for nearly three decades. Kaine was first elected to the Senate in 2012 after serving as the commonwealth's lieutenant governor and governor and handily defeated a very conservative challenger in 2018. He was also the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Virginia Republicans have grown more confident about their statewide electability after Gov. Glenn Youngkin's (R-VA) 2021 victory and the party's performance in the 2022 midterm elections. Still, Kaine's incumbency boost and strong approval rating will make him tough to beat.
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Some of Cao's primary competitors include Eddie Garcia, a 22-year-old Army veteran and former congressional aide, Jonathan Emord, the author and constitutional litigator, and Scott Parkinson, a longtime adviser to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and top Club for Growth executive.
Parkinson, who serves as the conservative advocacy group's vice president of government affairs, has the firm backing of his employer for his Senate bid. The group, which supports limited government and free-market principles, will be able to provide Parkinson's campaign with critical resources to finance advertising buys and staff hires.