The fifth-annual Texas Tribune Festival, held this weekend at The University of Texas at Austin, was a blizzard of politics and policy discussion that left this member of the capitol press corps with a number of things I’d like to write about this week, once I recuperate from the festival itself.
So for now, I’d just like to give readers an update on a subject of much speculation that I wrote about last week: will Julián Castro, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and former mayor of San Antonio, be Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016? Evan Smith, the co-founder and CEO of the Tribune, put this question to Castro himself during their one-on-one conversation Sunday morning. The secretary’s response, as Smith anticipated, was noncommittal, but Castro offered some interesting elaboration: he doesn’t feel that he will be Clinton’s choice for running mate, in the end. And though Castro said that he and his family would take such an offer seriously, as anyone would, “it’s not a given” that he would ultimately say yes.
Castro went on to say that it’s unlikely, but not impossible, that he’d run for governor in 2018. That sounds about right to me too. Several years ago, it was an operating assumption for most Texas political watchers that Castro was considering a gubernatorial bid in 2018, but in the wake of 2014’s Republican landslide, the timeline has been revised: these days, I think, the operating assumption is that Castro is considering a gubernatorial bid in 2022.
Video of the full conversation with Castro, and several other marquee events, is available at the Tribune‘s site.
