Politics

Julián Castro to Leave the Ranch for the White House Cabinet

Julián Castro, the mayor of America's seventh-largest city and the former keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, is reportedly heading to Washington, D.C., where he will lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

By Adam Chandler
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Julián Castro, the mayor of America's seventh-largest city and the former keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, is reportedly heading to Washington, D.C., where he will lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Mr. Castro, who has often been mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate for the Democrats, would take the place of Shaun Donovan, who would become director of the Office of Management and Budget. That job is being vacated by Sylvia Mathews Burwell, who has been tapped by Mr. Obama to be secretary of health and human services and seems headed to Senate confirmation.

Castro will join his twin brother Joaquin, a congressman, in Washington, D.C., where the two will perhaps continue their meteoric rise as future fixtures of the Democratic Party. As we noted, many hopes are pinned to the Castros, especially Julián as well as his young daughter, who stole the show at the 2012 DNC.

After rejecting an earlier offer by President Obama to become his Transportation Secretary back in 2012, it seems like Castro may be realizing that Texas is still a state where it's very difficult to succeed as a Democrat.

Domenech is obviously and violently biased here, but there is some truth to this. Over at The Atlantic, David A. Graham comments on Castro's resemblance to his mentor, Henry Cisneros:

A charismatic rising star Democrat, the Hispanic mayor of San Antonio, leaping to Washington as secretary of housing and urban development—if this sounds familiar, you must remember 1993, when Henry Cisneros took the same post in Bill Clinton’s administration. Cisneros was just the sort of figure Castro is, with the same sense of destiny about him, the kind of politician who was mentioned as a potential first Hispanic resident of the White House But Cisneros never made it. After it emerged that he’d made questionable payments to an ex-mistress, he left the administration and later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

So Democrats should really hope that doesn't happen again. For more insights on Castro, have a look at Derek Thompson's interview with him back in 2010, before he was DNC-famous.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.