‘Accidental congressman’ Cao makes history in beating Jefferson

• By ALLEN M. JOHNSON JR.
• Advocate New Orleans bureau
• Published: Dec 9, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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NEW ORLEANS — For someone who just made history, Anh “Joseph” Cao smiled easily enough Monday.

A political unknown and a newly minted Republican, Cao, 41, became the first Vietnamese American ever elected to Congress on Saturday, with an upset victory over indicted Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, 61, in the general election for Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District.

Seated between two hulking Republican Party stalwarts at a luncheon in New Orleans, the diminutive Cao, who pronounces his name “Gow” but accepts “Cow,” recalled the July day he qualified for the race. He went home and told his wife, pharmacist Hieu “Kate” Hoang — afterward.

“She said, ‘I was crazy,’ ” Cao smiled. “I said, ‘you’re right, but let’s wait and see what happens’.”

On Saturday night, the improbable occurred — Cao won, beating Jefferson and two third-party candidates.

According to complete but unofficial returns, Cao grabbed 49.55 percent of the vote compared with Jefferson’s 46.82 percent.

Cao, a shy immigration lawyer, not only defeated Louisiana’s first black congressman since Reconstruction, but also a “hero” to many in the tight-knit Vietnames immigrant community of eastern New Orleans, a Gao insider said Monday.

“Bill Jefferson fought for normalization of (U.S.) relations with Vietnam long before it became popular to do so,” Gao adviser Cheron Brylski, a longtime critic of Jefferson acknowledged. “He was a hero. I went to several functions where Jefferson was honored and respected in the Vietnamese community.”

A member of the House since 1990 and a strong advocate of free trade, Jefferson supported policies to help the emigration of Vietnamese to the United States after the Vietnam War, including New Orleans, Brylski said.

President Bill Clinton announced normalization of relations with communist Vietnam in 1995 — 20 years after Gao fled the war-torn Asian nation as an 8-year-old boy.

Ironically, Brylski said, the policies Jefferson staunchly supported facilitated his own defeat but the improbable political rise of the first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress.

“Maybe Jefferson should take some comfort in that,” said Brylski, a former campaign press secretary to two candidates who Jefferson defeated, first in 2006 then in October 2008.

Since Saturday’s election, political analysts have argued over what factors shaped the outcome of Gao’s historic victory, such as the politically corrosive effect of multiple federal indictments of Jefferson and members of his immediate family on black voter turnout.