Julian Castro – The Buzz, The Opportunity, The Responsibility
By Victor Landa, NewsTaco
A day before the Democratic National Convention officially kicks off and there’s a buzz in certain circles about Julian Castro, this year’s young keynoter. I popped-in on the Hispanic Caucus meeting where a mix of eager and blurry-eyed (it was early Monday morning and the Sunday night revelry lived up to it’s legendary status) blue party Latino faithful tried at once to rally and organize. From the podium came charges to work hard for President Obama, for Sonia Sotomayor, for Julian Castro…
Cheers filled the room.
Castro’s in Charlotte already. NewsTaco posted a Facebook picture of him yesterday, trying out the podium at the Time Warner Arena for size. But two weeks ago, far removed from the buzz, he was back in San Antonio preparing for what could be one of the biggest nights of his life, so far.
I caught up with him in his corner office at the San Antonio city hall and we chatted about the speech, about the opportunity it represents for him and the responsibility that weighs on his shoulders.
Victor: How do you plan to manage the fine line between delivering a speech that’s both personal and speaks in broad strokes at the same time?
Victor: As the first Latino to deliver the keynote address at the DNC, there are a lot of expectations from your speech. What do you expect from yourself?
Victor: Many American’s who’ll be watching you don’t, for whatever reason, understand or know the U.S. Latino community. There are many false assumptions about who they are. You’ll be in a good position to introduce them to the Latino experience. How do you plan to do that?
Castro will, of course, need to speak to Latinos’ concerns about President Obama’s divergent immigration record. On the one hand he’s opened a temporary door of opportunity to almost a million DREAMers, and on the other he’s set record deportation numbers. And he must balance that with the fact that immigration is not the most important issue for many Latino voters. Latinos, like most American voters, are concerned with the economy, jobs and issues like healthcare.
What he says and how he says it could set his future political path; we all know what the keynote did to put a spotlight on a young Barack Omama…no pressure.
We’ll bring you more of our interview with Castro tomorrow.
