MONDAY, MAY 23 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE B5
hand their babies to U.S. Ma-
rines, Cao said the deadly with-
drawal reminded him of his
family’s experience. Soon after,
he decided to run for Congress.
A father of five whose children
are home-schooled, Cao ham-
mered on education throughout
his campaign. He advocated for
school choice and sought to ap-
peal to conservative parents who
had become active at school
board meetings to oppose “criti-
cal race theory” and racial equity
and diversity policies.
Cao, who graduated from the
district’s elite Thomas Jefferson
High School for Science and
Technology, had been vocal in his
opposition to the Fairfax County
school district’s changes to the
school’s admissions process. The
district eliminated a notoriously
challenging entrance exam and
made other changes in an effort
to boost student diversity. But
Cao and parents with the Coali-
tion for TJ — who filed a lawsuit
and fought the case to the Su-
preme Court — argued the
changes lowered standards and
discriminated against Asian
Americans.
Cao’s positions on education
issues appeared to excite Repub-
lican parents out at the polls
Saturday.
Candice van Schaick, 44, said
she home-schools some of her
eight children, who range from
toddlers to a 19-year-old college
student — just like Cao, a shared
experience that prompted her to
rank him first.
“He seems to share a lot of the
same values that I have,” said van
Schaick, who also graduated
from Thomas Jefferson High
School. “To be a father, a busi-
nessman, to have served in the
military and to then be pursuing
a life with his family that seems
consistent with the values we’re
raising our kids with.”
Tim Vermilion, a 49-year-old
engineer who ranked candidate
Dave Beckwith, Lawson and Cao
in his top three, said Saturday
that he had to think about who
could pull the most votes in
November.
Vermilion said he has been
feeling “Trump fatigue.” A candi-
date with Cao’s background
might appeal more to independ-
ent voters, he added, and “comes
at immigration issues with a
different perspective.”
Cao has said that he does not
want to discuss any changes to
the immigration system or paths
to citizenship until the border is
secured. He also has appealed to
religious conservatives on issues
such as abortion, saying he sup-
ports overturning Roe v. Wade
and believes abortion policy is
best left to states.
J. Miles Coleman, an associate
editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at
the University of Virginia, said in
a recent interview that abortion
could be a wild-card factor in a
blue district like the 10th and
that it could be one issue moti-
vating Democrats to come out to
the polls.
“Republicans can’t be seen as
too conservative on social is-
sues,” Coleman said. “And Roe
would be one of those things that
would not drastically change
things but maybe help with Dem-
ocrats’ margin.”
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney
(N.Y.), chairman of the Demo-
cratic Congressional Campaign
Committee, said in a statement
Sunday that Virginia voters will
“reject Hung Cao’s toxic politics”
and called Northern Virginia
“Wexton country.”
In a statement, Wexton fo-
cused on her work in Congress
backing coronavirus relief and
the infrastructure bill, support-
ing victims of domestic violence
and holding “the Chinese gov-
ernment accountable for their
human rights atrocities.” Wexton
sits on the powerful House Ap-
propriations Committee as well
as the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China, which
monitors China’s human rights
abuses of the Uyghurs and other
religious minorities; the district
is home to a large population of
Uyghur refugees.
“I look forward to continuing
to travel around the new 10th
District to meet with voters,
listen to the needs of families,
and speak to how crucial it is to
defend this seat,” Wexton said.Teo Armus contributed to this report.cent. About 15,000 Republicans
voted.
Cao’s victory sets up an in-
triguing matchup between a po-
litical novice with clear grass-
roots appeal in conservative cir-
cles and Wexton, a former Lou-
doun County prosecutor and
state senator who flipped the
district blue in 2018 by a double-
digit margin. Cao’s nomination
aligns with the Virginia GOP’s
push to elevate more diverse
slates of candidates to expand
the party tent — such as Attorney
General Jason S. Miyares and Lt.
Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears — and
that could end up as an asset for
Republicans in what will be a
difficult attempt to oust Wexton
in the blue district.
Although President Biden won
the 10th as its drawn now by
18 percentage points in 2020,
Republicans grew hopeful that
flipping the seat red could be
within reach after Youngkin
made considerable headway in
the district in his gubernatorial
race, losing the redistricted 10th
by less than two points. His
success encouraged national Re-
publicans to target Wexton, one
of three Virginia congresswomen
they hope to take down in a
midterm election year expected
to be a referendum on Democrat-
ic power. Millions of dollars
probably will be poured into ads
and voter outreach in the coming
months by outside groups and
the two campaigns.
But as Cao’s win illustrated,
money isn’t always everything —
even in a region such as North-
ern Virginia, one of the most
expensive media markets in the
nation where candidates must
jockey for attention to get their
message to voters. And as he
prepares to take on Wexton, Cao
argued that his win proved polit-
ical experience isn’t everything,
either: “Look at yesterday’s pri-
maries: They didn’t want a politi-
cal veteran; they wanted a fresh
voice,” he said Sunday.
Lawson had raised more than
$920,000 — more than twice
what Cao raised — and had
high-profile backing from Rep.
Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), the third-
ranking Republican in the
House, and several other promi-
nent right-wing activists.
Lawson had framed herself as
a premier fighter against “woke”
racial equity policies. But Law-
son also faced some attacks from
the right wing over a vote she
took in 2020 — a unanimous
bipartisan vote — to “develop a
framework for becoming a more
inclusive and equitable Prince
William County.”
David Ramadan, a former Re-
publican state legislator who
represented parts of Loudoun
and Prince William counties, re-
called seeing attacks over the
vote proliferate in right-wing
circles online. That was “amaz-
ing” considering Lawson had a
reputation as a staunch con-
servative, he said.
“Jeanine Lawson started as
the favorite candidate, and she
had pretty much the endorse-
ments of the Who’s Who of
traditional conservative leaders
and activists, from Morton
Blackwell to Ken Cuccinelli,” said
Ramadan, an instructor at
George Mason University’s Schar
School of Policy and Govern-
ment. “She also had a record as a
public official — and that record
was not far-right enough for the
MAGA wing of the party.”
Ramadan, noting Loudoun
County’s sizable population of
South Asian Americans and im-
migrants, suggested that Cao
probably succeeded with a reso-
nant immigrant story and out-
reach to the minority community
— but also in part because he had
no record that the Republican
base could critique. And he capi-
talized on issues that have ener-
gized those voters, such as elec-
tion integrity and fighting
against education policies in-
volving racial equity, Ramadan
said.
Cao was born in Vietnam and
fled the country with his family
shortly before the fall of Saigon
in 1975. In an interview last
week, he recalled his mother
sewing money into the hems of
his and his siblings’ clothes, in
case they were separated. And as
he watched the fall of Kabul in
August, seeing Afghan mothers
CAO FROM B1
Cao to run in Va. district
that flipped blue in 2018
experienced both experiences.
Such immersion was not al-
ways an option. Many shows of
yesteryear do not envelop viewers
in an alternate universe. There is
no M*A*S*H Experience. There is
no Car 54, Where Are You? Ex-
perience.
Saul Austerlitz, another
“Friends”-book author who lives
in the real New York City, said the
sitcom offers a particular “fantasy
of adulthood” to younger audi-
ences. It’s one in which, besides
the low rent, people with jobs and
even young families still get to
have breakfast together.
“It’s a bit innocent, in a way,”
Austerlitz said. “Perhaps people
are searching for innocent plea-
sure, at a moment where those
seem few and far between.”Ryan Bacic and Bonnie Jo Mount
contributed to this report.Plus, in a hyperonline era in
which everything is competing
for your attention, “Friends”
doesn’t ask much. “You could
watch it like background noise
but still know what’s going on,”
said Sophia Assuras, 21, a recent
Experience visitor.
Assuras, a recent college grad-
uate visiting D.C. from Ontario,
was drawn both to the Friends
Experience and a Van Gogh ex-
perience that offered hyperreal
versions of actual paintings on
display elsewhere. She eventuallyhomophobia, body-shaming and
lack of diversity. But the show,
ever-present on TV even now,
soothes people in uncomfortable
situations, she said: when check-
ing into a motel in an unfamiliar
city, for example, or staying up all
night with a new child or, yes,
entering lockdown to survive a
global contagion.
“Turning on ‘Friends’ — okay,
that’s something familiar,” Miller
said. “It’s an unusual or unusually
potent source of comfort for a lot
of people.”watched “Friends” in the car.
“You feel like you’re inside it a
little,” Allen said of the Experi-
ence.
After two years of pandemic
living, fans in D.C. are turning,
more immersively here, to
“Friends.” The Experience,
though, is probably not for those
whose jobs are a joke and who are
broke: Standard tickets are more
than $40.
Chani Smith thought it was
worth it. Smith, who lives in
Israel, was in town for her niece’s
graduation from Gallaudet Uni-
versity. On the plane, she watched
the “Friends” reunion that came
out in 2021, then was lured to the
Experience by an ad she saw in
Union Station.
“Friends,” she said, evoked her
own life experience. “I did not live
with my family,” Smith, 38, said. “I
made my friends my family.”
Victoria Billar came from
Charlottesville. Now 27, she was
too young to watch “Friends”
when it first aired, but thought
the quest for love and friendship
it depicted still speaks to any
young person.
“It’s relatable not just for peo-
ple who were in their 20s in the
’90s,” she said.
It’s escapist, too. Roomy, rent-
controlled New York City two-
bedrooms, like Monica inherited
in “Friends,” are a dream at a time
when rent in the D.C. region and
many other metro areas is sky-
rocketing. A show about six
straight White people, “Friends”
didn’t need to address fraught
social issues, and it largely didn’t.
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are
never mentioned, though they
scrambled the airing of Season 8.
That fits the moment. Krystine
I. Batcho, a psychology professor
at Le Moyne College who studies
nostalgia, said people have been
“wounded” in recent years, en-
during lockdowns and isolation
and spending too much time in
virtual realities. There’s a reason
they might gravitate to a show
called “Friends.”
“They’re unhappy with or dis-
satisfied with the present,” Ba-
tcho suggested. “They are seeking
to remedy that — to sort of fix it by
finding something better than we
have now.”
A French postmodern philoso-
pher once mourned the fact that
images no longer bear any rela-
tion to reality. At the Friends
Experience, no one seems to
mind.
And not just here. There’s a
royal “Bridgerton” ball going on
in Northeast D.C. A Little Mer-
maid Cocktail Experience came
in January. Superfly X, the New
York-based company behind the
Friends Experience, will bring
that treatment to “The Office” in
D.C. this summer, for those who
wish to visit a re-creation of the
Los Angeles set of a fictional
Scranton, Pa., paper company.Superfly X worked with War-
ner Bros. to open the first
“Friends” pop-up in 2019 in the
real New York City. After 30 days’
worth of tickets sold out in an
hour, it decided to take the Ex-
perience on the road, according
to Stacy Moscatelli, the firm’s
co-president and chief strategy
officer. The re-created sets have
now visited Boston, Chicago and
other cities, having arrived in D.C.
in March.
“You just can’t underestimate
what these shows mean to peo-
ple,” Moscatelli said. (She de-
clined to comment on Superfly X
revenue.)
The experiences aren’t mu-
seums. Though signed scripts and
other ephemera show up in the
Friends Experience, fans want
more: “the opportunity to walk
inside those worlds,” Moscatelli
said.
“Especially during the pan-
demic, people turned to these
shows that felt like comfort food,”
she said. “They feel like they
know the characters. They watch
these shows over and over again.”
Over the course of all those
re-watches, the humor of
“Friends” has aged, and not all
well. Kelsey Miller, who lives in
the real New York and wrote the
book “I’ll Be There for You: The
One about ‘Friends,’” chafes at itsFRIENDS FROM B1‘Friends’ fans’ pandemic connectionPHOTOS BY BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POSTABOVE: Michelle Allen, 42,
visiting from Landover, Md.,
with her daughter and her
daughter’s boyfriend, explores
the Friends Experience.
LEFT: A prop from the exhibit,
which is located a mere giant
poking device away from the
Metro Center station.“Especially during thepandemic, peopleturned to these showsthat felt like comfortfood. They feel like theyknow the characters.They watch these showsover and over again.”
Stacy Moscatelli, co-president and
chief strategy officer at Superfly XRecipe
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