This Republican Senate candidate says he’s running to vanquish witchcraft

A Virginia Republican seeking his party’s nomination to unseat Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) says he is doing so in part to stop witches from taking over the state.

Retired Navy veteran Hung Cao launched his campaign in July, less than a year after losing a race for a U.S. House seat by six points to Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) last November.

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“You better look in my eyeballs, ’cause we ain’t afraid of you, you stinkin’ witch.”

“We are losing our country,” the anti-abortion, pro-gun Republican said in his campaign announcement video. “I have an obligation to fight back against those who want to control our lives and disrupt our families.”

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Apparently, witches are among the nefarious forces against whom Cao feels obligated to fight back. During a recent interview with California-based far-right pastor Sean Feucht, Cao spoke extensively about his Christian faith, noting the importance of mobilizing conservative Christian voters in an effort to prevent witches from taking over Virginia.

“There’s a place in Monterey, California called Lover’s Point,” Cao said. “The original name was Lovers of Christ Point, but now it’s become — they took out the Christ, it’s Lover’s Point, and it’s really — Monterey’s a very dark place now, a lot of witchcraft, and the Wiccan community has really taken over there. We can’t let that happen in Virginia.”

Republican candidate Hung Cao tells Christian nationalist Sean Feucht that he's running for the US Senate in Virginia because wiccans have taken over parts of California and now there is "a lot of witchcraft" and "we can't let that happen in Virginia." pic.twitter.com/ML8WtoVe2P

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) July 27, 2023

Kaine, who ran as Hilary Clinton’s Vice Presidential pick in 2016, is seeking a third term after winning reelection by 16 points in 2018. While Kaine is favored to win again, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 win has led some in the GOP to believe that the Virginia Senate race could be competitive in 2024, according to CNN.

As CNN noted, Cao would be the first Vietnamese-American elected to the U.S. Senate were he to win in a race against Kaine—although it’s unclear whether Cao himself would agree with that. In his conversation with Feucht, Cao described himself as “African-American because I grew up in Africa, too.”