Not bad.
Posted on 12/06/2008 8:27:13 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Sit down and make yourself comfortable, because this one of those stories you just won't want to miss. It's the kind of story for which this poor pen might not do justice. And it's the kind of story of which the world of politics needs more examples.
It's a story that effectively starts three days before the fall of Saigon in 1975, when eight-year-old Joseph Cao escaped South Vietnam with a brother and sister and eventually made his way to the United States, where he settled with an uncle. As the story continues today, Cao is the Republican nominee for Congress from Louisiana's Second Congressional District (mostly New Orleans), running against William "Cold Cash" Jefferson -- also known as "Dollar Bill" -- who for years has been fighting multiple-count bribery-related indictments after federal agents in 2005 caught nefarious activities on tape and then found $90,000 from the taped transaction hidden his refrigerator freezer.
But before you read about the congressional campaign, you'll want to know about what happened between Saigon and today.
What happened first was that Cao's father, a South Vietnamese military officer, was sent to a Viet Cong "re-education camp" for six years. That's why his children escaped Vietnam without him. As certain recent presidential candidate could tell you, Viet Cong camp is not place where one is treated well.
Anyway, Cao settled in Indiana for four ears, then resettled in Houston for high school, then earned a B.S. in physics in 1990 from Baylor University. Baylor is Baptist university. Upon graduation, Cao joined Jesuit order. For six years he remained Jesuit -- novice, scholastic, regent -- while earning a graduate degree in philosophy from Fordham University, several times doing social (anti-poverty) work abroad (including in his native Vietnam) and then teaching philosophy at Loyola University New Orleans.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Cao planned to be a Jesuit priest but was never ordained a priest. He had become interested in politics, and "religion and politics don't mix," he told me. Cao continued teaching philosophy at Loyola while attending Loyola's law school. (From physics to religion to philosophy to law -- quite the intellectual journey.) Along the line he married, and eventually fathered two children. He found that New Orleans East had a vibrant Vietnamese expatriate community boasting a nursery run by Vietnamese nuns and an active church. He set up a shingle as general-practice attorney. He was appointed in 2001 to the National Advisory Council for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He became a board member of a charter school, and a board member for a community development corporation that runs a medical clinic, a retirement center, and an urban farm.
Cao is not one who would ask for government handouts. The Vietnamese community was the very first to stand up its neighborhood again after Katrina, and they did it without government assistance. Cao was at the forefront of helping them recover.
If Cao wins, he would be the first Vietnamese-American ever elected to Congress -- from, it should be noted, the neighboring district to the one that first sent to Congress a man of Indian descent, Bobby Jindal. And as long as the U.S. Congress should exist on this Earth, Cao might remain the only Congressman who is a Vietnamese refugee-turned physics major-turned Jesuit-turned philosophy professor, lawyer, and dual-hurricane survivor.
AP just called it for Cao. Overwhelmingly blue district, so he’s probably a one termer, but he’ll be there for two years anyway.
Not bad.
Never know. Especially after the next census.
I sincerely hope that he will make it. This country desperately needs an honest look at Vietnam War. With a Vietnamese in Congress, there is a chance it will actually happen.
Wow.
Thanks for posting this.
Hey, sounds like he would make a good president some day, he said with just a hint of sarcasm.
He could always get a certificate of live birth from Hawaii.
What an amazing journey, both from Saigon through Academia now to unseating a fixture in LA politics...
A light of a cigar for Congressmen Cao.
We run good conservative candidates and they can win almost anywhere. I worked on a friend campaign in 1980, a conservative, she was running as a Republican, in one of the most Democratic districts in North Dakota. Usually a Republican would get 30-35% of the vote. She lost but by 15 votes. Regan coattails for sure-but she ran a good campaign.
We have a Hussein so why not
Too bad Mary Landreu was just re-elected. But, hey, perhaps in 2014?
Ya gotta love the new GOP. Gone are some more RINO’s and in their place stand a moose shooting chick governor, an Indian, and a Vietnamese refugee.
Out here in Orange County CA we have possibly the largest settlement of Vietnam origin people, outside Vietnam itself.
And they have elected several, to city council, to county supervisor and to the CA legislature.
And they are usually national security Republicans.
Nice to have this fellow in the US House. My tax man was about the same age, when he came to America. He too is a good fellow.
Most of the Vietnamese I know are good people. We tend to forget that it was those who spoke against us that also spoke against the Vietnamese, labeling them cowards and such, not willing to fight for their own country.
One reason they convinced many we needed to pull out and leave them to fight for themselves, unassisted, while the communist north received much aid from the Soviets and Chinese.
As much as the left sold those of us who served there out, they also sold out the Vietnamese.
That one now has won running as a Republican in such a strong Democrat district brings hope for the GOP, if they get the conservative message.
The Cubans also vote GOP.
Odd huh, they flee communism and come here and vote against the democrats. Hmm.
IIRC Pre-Katrina New Orleans was #8 in America.
bump for later
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