With so much else in the news, few people noticed on Jan. 6 when former U.S. Rep. Joseph Cao was appointed temporarily to a vacant seat on the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Notice should be taken. This new position for Cao, a Republican from Harvey, is the latest installment in one of the most fascinating lives in American politics.
Seventeen years ago, three weeks before Cao against all odds in a heavily Democratic district, I as “a Vietnamese refugee-turned physics major-turned Jesuit-turned philosophy professor, lawyer and dual-hurricane survivor.” By then, he already had run and lost a state legislative race. He lost his congressional reelection bid in 2010. He later withdrew from a race for attorney general and ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate and an appeals court judgeship. He also served on the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.
Clearly, this man loves in a representative democracy. As an 8-year-old escapee from communism — “essentially orphaned by the Vietnam War,” he said — this makes sense: He understands that rule via the consent of the governed is a precious commodity.
Still, why BESE? It was an appointment for which Cao said he never asked. It came via a surprise email from Gov. Jeff Landry, to represent St. Tammany Parish and parts of Orleans, Jefferson and Tangipahoa, after previously elected incumbent Paul Hollis took a job with the Trump administration. Cao is now one of three candidates in the May 16 primary to complete Hollis’ term.
The earlier portfolios he served or sought required either a policy generalist or a focus on law or coastal issues. Why, now, education?
Cao told me this week he actually considered “several” other races for BESE, “but the district would be very expensive to run for and it’s very hard to raise money for a BESE race. I never participated because of the cost.”
When Landry’s email arrived, Cao said, “I was ecstatic. It was a dream come true.”
And in truth, education even more than the law has been his life’s work. When he felt called to the Catholic priesthood in the early 1990s after graduating from Baylor University with a degree in physics, he joined the Society of Jesus (rather than other Catholic orders) because “Jesuits are famous as educators. That was my main reason for joining the Society of Jesus: so I would have the ability to educate kids and young adults.”
For six years in Jesuit training, that’s what he did, in schools in the Washington, D.C., area and then for “predominantly poor children” in places “all over Texas and h,” tutoring in English and math.
After leaving the Jesuits because he “wanted to have a family and participate in politics, and being a priest you can’t do those things,” he became a philosophy instructor at Loyola University in New Orleans while in law school there. He is now at LSU Health Sciences Center as an adjunct professor/guest speaker teaching ethics and public policy.
Cao also served on the boards of three public charter schools. He speaks especially passionately about the in Algiers, an open-enrollment high school sitting on land formerly controlled by the federal government. It was Cao who, while in Congress, arranged for the feds to transfer the land to local control specifically to create that school.
“Education is more than simply intellectual advancement,” Cao said, in explaining one of the fundamentals of both NOMMA and of his overall approach to schooling. “It must encompass a morality factor. ... It teaches them about helping others, about giving back to the community.”
Himself a product of public schools, Cao said he is an avid supporter of the LA GATOR school-choice accounts so that poorer children can find instruction that includes this holistic perspective.
“When I was in the Society of Jesus, I worked with mostly poor families, people struggling to make ends meet, kids not being educated adequately,” Cao said. “The best thing that we can do to serve our kids is to hold a high level of accountability in regard to our schools, in regard to teachers, in regard to family and parental involvement. The reason why we [in h] have revolves around two very important issues. One is accountability [and the second] is in getting parents more and more involved.”
Finally, Cao said that for children “from broken homes [where parents won’t get involved], the children may need a lot of emotional support. That’s why it’s so important to expand school counseling programs focused on truancy and emotional development.”
Cao sounded like an idealist 17 years ago, and he sounds like an idealist today. In a world of cut-throat politics, that sound is quite refreshing.