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If you blinked, you may have missed Julián Castro’s rising star

If you blinked, you may have missed Julián Castro’s rising star

With Hillary loss, Castro has gone from the everywhere man to the nowhere man.

Remember Julián Castro?

I can forgive you if you don’t and didn’t.

Castro was the former Mayor of San Antonio who was groomed to be the next rising star in the Democratic orbit. His stint as mayor, however, was not much of a base upon which to launch a national trajectory. As I noted in May 2014, Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio had less responsibility than Mayor Sarah Palin of Wasilla:

Sarah Palin, who also was Governor of Alaska at the time of her nomination for Veep, was excoriated by the mainstream media for her stint as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, with the argument being that her job only involved overseeing a few departments.  It was less than worthless experience, the meme went.

So Julian Castro, Mayor of San Antonio, is being groomed for a potential Veep slot in 2016 through a cabinet appointment, as discussed yesterday, Mayor of San Antonio one heartbeat away from the presidency?

I assumed that the position of Mayor of San Antonio was a serious job, like being the Mayor of many other big cities.  While a spot on a presidential ticket for someone who never was more than a Mayor would be unusual, we have had Mayors like Rudy Guiliani make presidential runs.

I gave Castro the benefit of the doubt on managerial and policy experience.  I was wrong.

It turns out that being Mayor of San Antonio involves no more responsibility than being Mayor of Wasilla, and maybe less.

Byron York and Jim Geraghty had written about that non-substantive San Antonio mayoralty. But my assessment was that Castro still had a chance:

A rising Democratic star with almost no actual managerial or policy experience, who looks good on camera, gives good speeches, has a compelling “life story,” and will energize the Democratic base through identity politics.  Nah, that couldn’t work.

Oh, wait.

julian castro

So what did the Democrats do to help groom the potential future leader of the party? Obama gave Castro a job as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, so the wonder-kid could actually claim to have done something with his life other than smile for the cameras.

There were a lot of whispers and some talk about Castro being a possible VP pick for Hillary. He even studied Spanish so he could play the identity politics properly.

But it didn’t happen.

Now that Hillary has lost and Dems are in the wilderness, what is a once rising star to do?

The Dallas News asks, From potential vice president to the political wilderness, what’s next for Julián Castro?:

Just a few short months ago, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro appeared to stand a decent chance of becoming the next vice president.

A few weeks ago, the San Antonio Democrat looked poised to assume another high-ranking executive role in a Hillary Clinton administration.
Now, as Democrats pick up the pieces from their nationwide losses on Election Day, Castro is preparing to be unemployed and seems destined to spend some time in the political wilderness.

But to friends, allies and Democratic strategists, Castro remains better positioned than most in his party to rebound from the setback of the 2016 election….

In an op-ed published Tuesday alongside pieces by other up-and-coming Democrats, Castro said, “It’s no time to panic” for his party in the aftermath of the election, predicting that “Americans will be looking for an antidote” as Donald Trump’s policies come to fruition….

Unlike his brother, Secretary Castro has ruled out the possibility of challenging Sen. Ted Cruz in his 2018 re-election race. He hasn’t turned down the idea of running for governor, but many Democrats were disappointed Trump’s 9-point margin of victory in Texas wasn’t lower, which would have increased the odds of seeing more competitive statewide races.

It seems that Julián Castro has gone from the everywhere man to the nowhere man. His chances of reaching political heights in still-red Texas seem limited, there are no cushy jobs for him in federal government. Some Democrat billionaire will put him on the payroll at some foundation or activist organization somewhere, while he figures out what to do.

But he’ll be back. Politics is all he knows. There’s no other there, there.

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Comments

“If you blinked, you may have missed Julian Castro’s rising star.”

Oh no! I blinked. Whatever am I going to do? I will just have to be content to see his falling star. This time I won’t blink. Oh look! There it goes. Ah Sorry, false alarm. That’s Hillary falling star!

    Tom Servo in reply to userpen. | December 14, 2016 at 6:22 pm

    The funniest thing is that he’s supposed to be some kind of locally popular wunderkind, but he’s actually a complete nobody in Texas, and he couldn’t win a statewide election for dogcatcher.

    (Btw, Cruz is guaranteed a 20 point margin against his brother)

    For publicity’s sake, he should probably consider running for Governor when Abbot is up for re-election in 2018. Not because he can win, but because right now Texas Dems don’t have a single person yet who has even mentioned any interest in running. Somebody should show up and hoover up those left wing contributions, even if it is a futile cause. (Abbott is even more popular now than the first time, and should win with a 30 point margin no matter who his opponent is)

      conservative tarheel in reply to Tom Servo. | December 16, 2016 at 9:32 pm

      well there is always debbie whatsherface ….
      no wait .. she is from fla …
      what about that bimbo who ran last time
      maybe she learned something and can run
      (and waste a lot of Dem donor money)
      again ….
      😀

Don’t be surprised if he ends up working for CNN or MSNBC

I have lived in San Antonio for thirty years. The “job” of Mayor is strictly figurehead; the Mayor has no day-to-day operational responsibilities whatever. Even in that non-job, Castro was a complete non-entity.

Ye Gads – per Wikipedia, he has a thinner resume than Carson. 1996 college grad, 2000, law school grad, 2005 started own law firm, 2009 figure head mayor of SA, 2014 HUD secy.

And they complain about Carson?!?!?

Narrative, narrative, narrative. Obama was inexperienced and an unknown in 2004, yet pulled it off in 2008. I don’t count anyone out. Whoever has the widest victim appeal will be presented as the next Messiah by the Dems and their sycophants in the MSM. Resumes are just boring lists of facts. It’s the narrative that lefties run with, since it’s all they’ve got.

This guy and his twin brother grew up on the knees of America-hating La Raza racists.

I was arguing with a lib on twitter over Carson’s appointment to HUD secretary and whether he was “qualified”. The main thrust of my argument was that a brain surgeon was replacing Julian Castro, Julian effing Castro! Carson was set up for success through the lowered expectations his predecessor implemented.

Amazingly, this putz actually had more executive experience than Barack Obama.

We say how that worked out.

Bitterlyclinging | December 11, 2016 at 7:02 am

The MSM/Democratic echo chamber would have made up for whatever experience Castro was lacking.
Wikileaks published a 2008 e-mail between George Soros and John Podesta in which the two discussed the logistics of setting up a media echo chamber to herlp get their progressive agenda advanced. This was about the same time as Soros was publicly revealed as pouring millions of dollars into David Brock’s mediamatters.org with the objective of Brock’s hirin a hundred new writers and editors at his concern.
This was long before Ben Rhodes bragged about using his “Media Echo Chamber” to facilitate Obama’s giving Iran permission to build nuclear warheads which it could use to target Tel Aviv and Haifa or New York, DC, and Los Angeles.

Every entity or person who hitched themselves to the Hillary wagon has been completely destroyed!

Done, it’s over!

Conservative Beaner | December 11, 2016 at 9:10 am

I forgot about this ass-clown until I saw this article. Not to worry the local rag Express-News (or the Excess-Abuse as some here in San Antonio call it) will eventually write a sympathetic article about him like they did for former San Antonio Mayor and HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros.

It looks like his brother got the better deal by becoming the Texas District 20 Congressman.

rising star

More like “flash in the pan.”

WhoLeon? Oh he’s smooth. His best attribute was working over San Antonio taxpayers for more money for his pet projects.