Post-racial

In the wake of the trouncing the Republicans took back on Nov. 4th, there have been a few silver lininings as Anh “Joseph” Cao won Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District seat, defeating William “Cold Cash” Jefferson and retained the 4th Congressional Seat in western Louisiana as John Fleming squeaked past Democrat Paul Carmouche in elections that were delayed by Hurricane Gustav.

Cao represents the first Vietnamese-American in Congress, a fact you may not hear elsewhere. Cao came to the U.S. as a child after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and went on to earn degrees in philosophy, physics and law. That’s all?

Of course, the fact that Jefferson is under indictment charges for bribery, laundering and misusing his congressional office certainly helped (though, Jefferson was re-elected back in ’06 when these charges stood as well), the fact that this person of (a different) color won in a predominantly black and heavily Democratic district and in a region where political corruption is almost seen as a way of life, is remarkable.

Combine this victory with the Saxby Chambliss run-off victory in Georgia last week, which prevents a Democratic 60-seat majority, and you get a sense of the length of the Obama coattails when he’s on the ballot vs. when he’s not and which suggests there is still a pulse in the conservative Republican “brand”.

Louisiana is now home to a Indian-American Republican Governor in Bobby Jindal and a Vietnamese-American Republican congressman in Anh Cao. As we were saying, a few silver linings but few nonetheless.

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P.S. In linked article above, it gets to the 4th paragraph before mentioning Cao by name.