NEW ORLEANS — Anh "Joseph" Cao, who hopes to be the first Vietnamese American elected to Congress, was helping a TV host with the pronunciation of his name.
It's not "cow" but "gow," he explained recently, with a hard "g." The interviewer, Eustis Guillemet -- an African American jazz bassist who also runs a local public affairs show -- practiced the name repeatedly, as if learning a new riff.
"You know, 'Cao' means 'tall,' " added the Republican candidate, who stands 5 feet 2 in his loafers. "And if you notice, I ain't that tall."
The "ain't" was a departure for an otherwise formal man -- a playful, deliberate shift into the soulful local vernacular and an acknowledgment, perhaps, that this rising star in New Orleans' Vietnamese community will have to charm a significant number of black voters if he hopes to defeat the scandal-plagued but resilient incumbent, Rep. William J. Jefferson.
Jefferson, a black Democrat, has represented Louisiana's majority-black 2nd Congressional District, which covers much of New Orleans, since 1991. He is facing an upcoming trial on federal corruption charges stemming from a bribery probe in which investigators found $90,000 in his freezer.
Wags in this scandal-weary city have concocted countless jokes about the congressman's "cold cash," and on Capitol Hill, House Democrats have stripped Jefferson of his seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. But he has maintained his innocence and his base of black support: In a Nov. 4 Democratic primary runoff, he handily defeated Helena Moreno, a white candidate, after garnering a significant number of black votes.
With Cao, Republicans hope to offer a fresh alternative for voters in the Dec. 6 general election. The immigration lawyer, 41, is a former college ethics teacher who spent six years training to be a Jesuit priest before leaving his studies in 1996.
Republicans are also hoping, in this season of broken racial barriers, that Cao's Vietnamese heritage will help him transcend the old tensions that have long defined New Orleans politics.
"It's no longer an issue of black and white," Cao said. "It now goes to the issue of who's going to better represent the 2nd District to bring about change, to bring about reform."
The continuing appeal of Jefferson can be partly explained by his relationships with voters and his record of meeting their needs. Guillemet, the TV host, said many blacks were sticking with Jefferson because they feared ceding political power to whites.
