I can think of something for him to do.
Julian Castro
Housing Secretary Julián Castro was long touted as a possible running mate for Hillary Clinton, but when the call came Friday informing him that the presumptive Democratic nominee had picked someone else, he wasn’t entirely surprised.
“It’s disappointing, of course,” Castro said in a telephone interview Saturday morning, “but it’s also easy to put into perspective. When I was 30 years old, I lost a very close mayor’s race. At the time I was completely disappointed and crushed. But a few years later I came back and I became mayor of San Antonio and it actually worked out for the better.”
[…]
In his Saturday telephone interview with The Washington Post, Castro said he had no doubt that Clinton will receive the overwhelming share of the Hispanic vote, even without a Latino on the ticket.
“I believe that Hillary Clinton has a broad vision for America and that the Latino community is very much a part of that vision,” he said. “I’m confident she will get strong support.”
He added: “In the years to come there will be a Latino or Latina president. I believe that’s going to happen in due time. I hope to be alive to see it, and I’m very confident that my kids will.”
It’s not crazy to suggest that person could possibly be Julian Castro. A direct step Castro could take to increase the probability of that outcome would be to run for Texas Governor in 2018. A win would of course be a huge advancement, but even a creditable loss that set him up for a better try in 2022 – as he himself noted, it took him two attempts to get elected Mayor in San Antonio – would suffice. Sure, there’s a huge downside risk attached to this, as there’s no indication Texas is ready to even come close to electing a Democratic governor. But there’s a big risk in playing it safe and waiting for the right opportunity to come along. People may forget who you are in the meantime, or some brash upstart may emerge and cut ahead of you in line. Ask David Dewhurst, or Hillary Clinton for that matter, about that.
In the meantime, if Castro is even slightly inclined towards running for Governor in 2018, he can lay a lot of groundwork for it by working to turn out Latino voters in Texas and help Democratic candidates, especially Latino candidates, get elected this year. There’s Pete Gallego for CD23, Dori Contreras Garza for State Supreme Court, State Rep candidates in Dallas and Bexar Counties, Ed Gonzalez for Harris County Sheriff, etc etc etc. He’s going to be out on the trail anyway, so why not put a little elbow grease into helping out in his own state? If he really wants to get people fired up about a future candidacy, spend a little time in places that aren’t Democratic now but which need to be at least on the way there for him to have something resembling a reasonable shot – Fort Bend, Williamson, Bastrop, Comal, Collin, Denton, Brazoria, you get this idea.
Now maybe Castro isn’t looking at 2018. Maybe he wants to do something different for awhile, maybe he’d like to step out of the spotlight for a few years and spend more time with his young family, maybe he’s given it plenty of thought and concluded that 2018 is hopeless and would do him too much damage. If any of these or something else like them are true, I will understand. But in the meantime, I’m going to root for the ending I want.
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