San Antonio Mayor
Julian Castro
Notes from Evan Smith
"Take it from the Los Angeles Times, The Economist, and other out-of-state soothsayers: If the Democrats have anything approaching a future in our ever-so-slightly-less-red state, and who knows what beyond that, this week's guest, Julian Castro, may be it. He is, they say, the total package: young and handsome and Hispanic and energetic and smart at a time when his party is bereft in many or all of those departments. And ambitious to boot, not in a cloying or annoying way, but in the manner of someone who knows he has something to contribute and can't wait to get to it. Elected mayor of San Antonio last May 9, Castro had guided the nation's seventh-largest and the state's second-largest city thus far with a steady but firm hand, focusing on dinner-table issues like jobs and schools, and has already shown himself to be adept at the permanent campaign aspect of the job, combining old-school retail politics with a flair for twenty-first century tools like video blogging and social media. He had run for mayor once before, in 2005, after serving as a councilman for four years, and he came extremely close to becoming the city's youngest-ever chief executive, winning a plurality on Election Day but losing a runoff. He spent next four years practicing law and his stump speech, waiting for the carousel to come back around. Born in San Antonio to a prominent Chicana activist who mostly raised him and his twin brother by herself, Castro graduated from Stanford University and Harvard Law School. At 35, he is the youngest mayor of the 50 largest American cities - so young that even Barack Obama recently joked that he could be mistaken for an intern. Of course, it wasn't too long ago that they probably made jokes like that about Mr. Obama ... and look how he turned out." - Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 02.25.10
