Honorable Julian Castro Gives Insight to Democratic Party

By Taylor Zavala
KTSW News Director

The 2015 Texas Tribune Festival was held last weekend, where a variety of speakers shone spotlights on different panels and sessions that took place. Topics such as higher education, environment, transportation and more were covered.

However, the crowds grew largest at the Special Events, National and State keynote speeches that took place throughout the weekend.

The Festival ended Sunday morning with the final session of the weekend, a one-on-one between CEO of the Texas Tribune Evan Smith and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro.

The conversation included a variety of topics ranging from Castro’s recent endorsement of presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, rumors that Castro may be in the running for Clinton’s VP slot, and how latinos can be better encouraged to vote.

Smith began the conversation by asking Castro about his endorsement of Clinton, questioning whether Castro believes she “flip flops” too much on issues. In response, Castro emphasized that Clinton “has guiding values and principles that she has stuck true too,” also agreeing that Clinton has the most concrete policies in terms of closing the wage gap.

Though Castro agreed that if Bernie Sanders won the democratic nomination, he would support him, overall Castro believes Clinton’s years in public office gives her plenty to be proud of. Castro also believes that latino voters can easily support Clinton, citing her track record of supporting certain issues including education reform, universal healthcare and immigration reform, which Castro argues are issues that are very important to latinos.

When questioned about Clinton’s odds of being the nominee or winning the Presidential election, Castro said he believes Clinton “will defeat anyone she runs against,” including the variety of Republican nominees in the running. Castro also hypothesized that for whichever Republican candidate is chosen, “it will probably come down to a classic outsider who’s still in the system,” but Castro believes Clinton will probably beat any Republican candidate.

Regarding the recent passing of open carry, Castro made the point that the NRA has set up a “false narrative that there are good guys with guns and bad guys with guns,” disagreeing with Lt. Governor Dan Patrick about open carry being the way of Texas.

One of the final points made by Castro in terms of voter turnout was that if “we educate people to vote, we’ll create a pipeline of educated voters who will be tapped into the system,” emphasizing that in the last 3 election cycles, Texas has ranked dead last in the U.S. for voter turnout.

Though Castro says he has no intention in running for Governor any time soon, he also put to bed rumors that he should expect Clinton to ask him to be her running partner and Vice President for 2016. Castro believes that “in life there’s things that grab you,” stating that he has not felt that towards this opportunity. He agrees that there are wonderful reasons to accept the role but at the same time you would be changing your life forever.