NORFOLK — Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Republican Hung Cao sparred sharply over abortion, democracy and immigration Wednesday night in their only debate, an hour-long battle in which each called the other an extremist.
Squaring off on live television, Kaine blasted Cao for past comments comparing those who undergo or perform abortions to Nazis, for seeking to eliminate the federal Education Department and for supporting mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
“The choice is pretty clear: Do you want results or do you want extremists?” said Kaine, noting that Virginia was ranked the nation’s best for business and education when he was the state’s governor from 2006 to 2010.
Cao accused Kaine of leaving a host of national problems unsolved over a 30-year political career and leading the country down the wrong path.
“This country has taken a dark turn, and the Democrats are turning this country into what I ran away from,” said Cao, who fled Vietnam as a child.
Hosted by Norfolk State University and Nexstar Media Group, the debate took place on the historically Black institution’s campus. It was moderated by news anchors Tom Schaad of WAVY-TV 10 and Deanna Allbrittin of WRIC-TV.
Cao delivered a few startling lines, including one after he was asked to explain his claim that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives had hurt military recruiting.
“When you’re using a, you know, drag queen to recruit for the Navy, that’s not the people we want,” he said, apparently referring to a former Navy “digital ambassador” who drew backlash from other conservatives. “What we need is alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts, eat them and ask for seconds.”
Cao drew laughs and groans amid another exchange, as Kaine flatly disputed Cao’s claim that the senator had only gotten three bills passed in his Senate career.
“There’s two truths in the world, okay: Never walk in a Target store wearing a red shirt and never go against an Asian when it comes to math,” Cao said.
Asked for his reaction to that comment after the debate, Kaine told reporters he was “completely bewildered” by the joke, which he said was based on stereotypes and unrelated to the discussion. Kaine added that he has “a very high batting average” when it comes to getting bills passed.
Cao chose not to address reporters after the event.
The Kaine-Cao contest has been relatively quiet, with Kaine leading comfortably in public polls and by more than a factor of five in fundraising ($16 million to Cao’s $3 million). Kaine led Cao by 12 points among likely voters in a September Washington Post-Schar School poll — well above the margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. A University of Mary Washington poll last month found Kaine with a smaller, six-point edge. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race “solid D.”
Kaine, 66, is a former Richmond mayor who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016. He is seeking his third term in the Senate.
Cao, 53, a retired Navy captain who lives in Purcellville, served 25 years in Navy Special Operations and was deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. He has never served in public office but made an unsuccessful bid to unseat Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) in the 10th District in 2022.
Kaine has made well-publicized appearances around the commonwealth and has a $2.2 million TV ad blitz booked for the final six weeks of the campaign. Cao has announced few public events in advance and has no broadcast or cable TV ad time reserved for the homestretch, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan tracker of money in politics.
Their meeting at Norfolk State gave both men a chance to push themes at work in the presidential race between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Cao, who won a five-way primary with Trump’s endorsement, did not invoke the Republican presidential candidate but took shots at the Biden administration and by implication, Harris. Kaine often came to the administration’s defense.
Asked how he would address the cost of living, Cao said he would make the nation energy independent, in contrast to the current administration, which he said “made us dependent on oil from countries that hate us like Iran and Venezuela.”
Kaine called that answer “misleading,” saying that under Biden, America is producing more domestic energy than at any other time in history. As for the cost of living, Kaine called for continued investment in affordable, clean energy — including nuclear — negotiating for lower drug costs and reducing student loan debt.
Democracy was another flash point, with Kaine noting Cao’s previous comments that people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, should be compensated, not prosecuted. Cao, who sidestepped questions about the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s win in 2020, said he would vote to certify the 2024 results even if Harris wins.
The pair shook hands at the end of the debate and found themselves in occasional agreement. Cao said he would support a bill Kaine has co-written to allow a parent to be charged if their child uses the adult’s gun in a crime. But their stances on most issues were starkly different.
On the subject of immigration, Cao confirmed that he supports mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, noting that his own family “waited in line for seven years” for citizenship.
“You can’t jump the line. You go to Costco and you jump the line, what do you expect to happen?” he said.
Kaine, who took time off from his studies at Harvard Law School to teach carpentry and welding at a Jesuit missionary school in Honduras, said finding a way for immigrants to legally work and pay taxes in the country “could be the one best thing to expand the economy.” He said he never supported amnesty for undocumented immigrants and ticked off a string of bipartisan measures he supported over the years, including legislation backed by the border control union this year, which Republicans dashed at Trump’s urging.
Asked about reparations for descendants of enslaved people, Kaine and Cao both called education the best way to address past injustices.
“Our country needs to heal, and we can’t heal if we keep picking at the scabs. Education is the only equalizer here,” Cao said.
Kaine used that moment to break in — out of turn — to say: “My opponent forgot to mention he wants to abolish the Department of Education.”
Cao said education is best left to the states, drawing another sharp response from Kaine, whose late father-in-law, A. Linwood Holton, as Republican governor of Virginia in the 1970s, pushed for desegregation by sending his children to mostly Black Richmond schools.
“Leaving it to the states is what led to school segregation,” Kaine said. “We’ve seen it, and we don’t want to go back.”
One of their sharpest exchanges came over abortion. Noting Cao’s past comments that life begins at conception, Kaine said the Republican would seek to ban abortion, in vitro fertilization and certain forms of birth control. “My opponent has compared women and doctors who make the difficult choice to terminate a pregnancy to Nazis and bombmakers,” Kaine said. “That is outrageous.”
Cao said he supported IVF — noting his family had grown through fertility treatments as well as adoption — and said he would not support any bill to ban abortion at the federal level. He said the Supreme Court had rightly sent the issue back to the states.
Cao called Kaine an extremist for opposing the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would have punished any doctor who fails to provide medical care to a child born alive after an attempted abortion.
Kaine said he opposed that because federal law already requires that care and called the measure an effort to “smear” women.
Asked what limits he would support on abortion, Kaine said he agrees with those already in Virginia law, which requires parental consent for minors and allows abortions in the third trimester only to save the life or health of the mother, as certified by three doctors.