A year after Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) brought his education-focused campaign to the northern Virginia county of Loudoun, the issue is once again seeping into campaign politics in an area within commuting distance of the nation’s capital.
Throughout 2021, Loudoun County was infamously the epicenter of a nationwide movement of parental activism that began when the school district failed to offer in-person classes for months into the 2020-2021 school year and continued over concerns the district was incorporating critical race theory in the classroom. The protests and outrage reached a fever pitch in June 2021 when it was revealed the school board had sought to cover up a sexual assault by a male student in the girl’s bathroom at a district high school, while attempting to pass a resolution allowing students to access bathrooms based on their gender identity rather than their biological sex.
The county served as the perfect backdrop for the parental rights and education-focused campaign of then-candidate Glenn Youngkin, as he hammered his Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe for saying that he didn’t believe “parents should be telling schools what they should teach” in the closing days of the race. The tactic proved successful, and Youngkin prevailed over McAuliffe by two percentage points.
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But with a new electoral cycle, the education issue is once again featuring prominently in the northern Virginia county, this time in the race for Virginia’s 10th Congressional District in the U.S. House.
Republican Hung Cao, a political newcomer seeking to unseat two-term incumbent and former prosecutor Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D), is leaning into the Youngkin playbook of support for parental rights in his bid for Congress and has appeared alongside the governor at multiple campaign events.
A refugee from the Vietnam War, Cao grew up in Annandale, Virginia before attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Cao said his family upbringing played a key role in why he so greatly values education.
“When I came to this country, my parents taught me the most important lesson: They can take away your money, they can take away your position in life, but they can never take away the knowledge in your head,” Cao said in the interview. “That’s why my family strives so hard for education, that’s why we push for it, we sacrifice for it, and we kept reaching for it.”
Cao was a member of the inaugural graduating class at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a magnet school in Alexandria, Virginia, that has been mired in controversy after the Fairfax County School Board overhauled its admissions process from a purely merit based system to a test and lottery system in an attempt to raise the number of black students attending the school. The change in the school’s admissions process has been the subject of legal challenges that accuse the school board of deliberately trying to lower the number of Asian students at the elite high school.
“We were the very first class and there were a lot of unknowns, but we knew it was something very special,” said Cao, who graduated from the high school in 1989. “Watching what happened to [Thomas Jefferson high school] the last two years, where they took away the meritocracy … it broke my heart because we were the No. 1 high school in the country, and now they’re destroying what we built over all these years.”
A good education, Cao said, is a surefire way to help lift people out of poverty, before noting that the nation’s report card released this week showed substantial declines in math and reading scores in fourth and eighth grade.
“My opponent is directly responsible for a lot of this educational failure,” Cao said of Wexton, noting that the two-term congresswoman had received the support of Elizabeth Guzman, a Virginia state delegate who introduced legislation seeking to expand the definition of criminal child abuse to include parents who did not affirm their children’s chosen gender or sexual identity.
If elected, Cao said he plans on introducing a “parent bill of rights” that will expressly limit the role of government in family life.
Wexton, for her part, has distanced herself from Guzman’s proposal and has touted the fact that her children attend public schools in the district.
“As a mom and the only parent of kids in our public schools in this race, ensuring all children have the opportunity to receive a world-class education has always been a priority for me,” Wexton told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “I believe that parents have the most important role to play in helping their kids get on a pathway to success for their future, and don’t support proposals that would put parents in jail for not supporting their child’s gender identity or sexual orientation.”
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She added: “I’m fighting for strong investments in our schools and workforce development programs, and am proud that through my work in Congress we’ve successfully reopened schools and are helping students continue to make up for lost learning during the pandemic.”
With Democratic President Joe Biden mired in low approval ratings and historical trends favoring the party out of power in midterm elections, Republicans are widely expected to take control of the House of Representatives and make an aggressive play to gain control of the U.S. Senate. But even on a good election night for Republicans, Virginia’s 10th Congressional District will be a tough seat to flip to the GOP’s column. The Cook Political Report currently rates the seat as “Likely Democrat,” and FiveThirtyEight gives Cao an eight in 100 chance of defeating Wexton and flipping the seat.
