Joaquin Castro’s San Antonio Strategy
San Antonio, Texas — Congressional Candidate Joaquín Castro has had a busy week. Just a few days ago he was campaigning in the newly created 35th congressional district, hoping a federal court map would settle any potential disputes with ousted Austin Congressman Lloyd Doggett. Then, the maps came out and the district changed slightly, settling the Doggett issue.
But then, only the day after Thanksgiving, everything changed again.
Longtime San Antonio Congressman Charlie Gonzalez called Castro Friday evening and revealed his impending retirement, encouraging Castro to run in his district, the 20th. This is the same district Gonzalez’s father, Henry B. Gonzalez, worked in from 1961 to 1998. It is a heavily Democratic district, and a heavily Latino one, in a city where Castro’s twin brother, Julián, is mayor.
Whether Castro would have run in Central Texas, or gets elected to serve San Antonio, it’s been evident in our conversations with him that his political vision has been sharpened by his experiences as a San Antonio native.
Castro had been running for six months as the candidate of Central Texas, a regional candidate, and in the span of a week he dropped that dream to run in favor of his longtime dream of running in the district where he grew up. Castro told NewsTaco that Gonzalez’s retirement caught him by surprise.
“When my grandmother came to the U.S. 100 years ago, that’s where she settled, the West Side. I always dreamed about serving there, but would never have dreamed about running against Charlie,” he told NewsTaco. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to serve the community where I was born and raised, and to continue the legacy of service that the Gonzalez family has laid for San Antonio.”
But what of Castro’s former dreams of creating regional economic development between the San Antonio-Austin corridor? We spoke to Castro before the lines changed and even then, much of his vision for economic development along the corridor seemed based in his experiences in San Antonio.
“One of my first jobs is making sure we get all of the stakeholders from all of the corridor cities to come together and go through an envisioning process, similar to what you see with SA 2020,” he told NewsTaco, referring to an initiative his brother Julián launched in 2010 to tackle various challenges in San Antonio over the next decade. In that vein, he mentioned bringing together existing industries in the corridor — high tech, cybersecurity, biosciences-medical, manufacturing and transportation — and figuring out how to further spur economic development as a region.
Even the way Castro described the region — by comparing the challenges of East Austin to those of the West Side of San Antonio — smacks of the heavy influence his hometown has had on the way his political mind operates. Castro’s presence in this historic congressional district while his brother presides over the city as mayor may open up huge opportunities for the residents of San Antonio as far as having willing, able and effective advocates goes.
This wouldn’t be the first time a team of family members teamed up to represent the city, though, so the onus of whether the twins are able to enact tangible change for this growing community is truly on them.
To this end, Castro told us that he wanted to be a spokesman for the Central Texas region, to be at the forefront of “choreographing” the inevitable economic development and population growth that is already taking place in the region, to spearhead this effort so that years won’t pass and the region wouldn’t have reached its potential. He also insisted that, despite jumping districts to a place with an uber-local focus, San Antonio is still going to be part and parcel of the Central Texas region that will be one of the largest in the United States in coming years.
“This experience has made sure that my horizon is much broader than the neighborhood where I live, my immediate community,” Castro told NewsTaco a few hours after switching districts. He wants to be a bridge builder, he told us, and along with his brother thinks he can do great things for the region.
“I don’t think I’m the candidate of Washington, D.C.,” he told us at his downtown San Antonio campaign headquarters, in between school visits and block walk events. And for someone who grew up here, and has circled back at every turn, it’s doubtful anyone will be able to argue otherwise.
