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Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Monday, May 19, 2014

San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro Is Said to Be HUD Pick in Cabinet Reshuffling

New York Times
By Jonathan Martin and Peter Baker
May 17, 2014

WASHINGTON — President Obama is preparing to nominate Mayor Julián Castro of San Antonio as his new secretary of housing and urban development, elevating one of his party’s Hispanic rising stars as part of a cabinet shuffle that has possible implications for the 2016 presidential race, Democrats informed about the plans said on Saturday.

Mr. Castro, who has often been mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate for the Democrats, would take the place of Shaun Donovan, who is to become director of the Office of Management and Budget. That job is being vacated by Sylvia Mathews Burwell, whom Mr. Obama tapped to be secretary of health and human services and who seems headed to Senate confirmation.

Mr. Castro, 39, won national attention in 2012 as the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, and he and his twin brother, Representative Joaquin Castro, have become popular speakers on the party’s fund-raising circuit. Mr. Obama and the Democrats have predicated their electoral hopes on appealing to the country’s growing Hispanic population as House Republicans have blocked their efforts to overhaul the immigration system.

Mr. Obama’s failure to push through immigration legislation has increased the political pressure on him and his Democratic allies from some Latino groups, which have demanded in recent weeks that the president act to reduce deportations that break up immigrant families.

Mr. Obama had tried to lure Mr. Castro to the cabinet before. After the 2012 election, the president approached the mayor about serving as transportation secretary, but Mr. Castro, whose third term ends next year, indicated that he preferred to stay in San Antonio. He also passed on the chance to run for governor of Texas this year.

“Just like I decided not to run in 2014, I told the voters of San Antonio I would remain mayor until my tenure was over,” Mr. Castro said in an interview last month.

He could not be reached on Saturday, and it was not clear what had prompted his change of heart. But Mr. Castro, a Mexican-American whose mother once worked at the San Antonio Housing Authority, found the HUD post appealing because it would allow him to work on issues he has focused on as mayor, according to associates familiar with his thinking.

Asked last month if he thought he might be wasting a political opportunity if he did not move to the national stage, Mr. Castro said: “I’m going to be 40 this year. I feel like I have a decent amount of time either way. Whatever happens in the next two years to eight years, I’ll have time.”

But he has been advised to raise his profile in the hope of securing a slot on the national ticket. Democrats said that by taking an executive position in Washington, he would bolster his résumé after serving as mayor of the nation’s seventh-largest city since 2009.

“You take somebody who is a very successful and appealing politician, who has regional strength, and put them on the national stage, and by definition you raise their stature and increase the possibility that they are going to get a look by the nominee,” said Jonathan Prince, a Democratic consultant.

Some of Mr. Castro’s allies also believe that with income inequality becoming a focal point for Democrats, the HUD job offers the mayor an opportunity to burnish his credentials on issues of poverty and to raise his appeal among those on the party’s left. The post will also let him develop relationships with and win favors from city leaders and activists in a way he cannot on the Democratic  lecture circuit.

In a move that raised eyebrows about his political future, Mr. Castro shared lunch in February with former President Bill Clinton and Henry Cisneros, a former San Antonio mayor who went on to serve as housing secretary in Mr. Clinton’s cabinet.

“I advised that he accept a position for President Obama,” Mr. Cisneros said in an interview this year about the previous offer. “I thought that if he was going to be vice-presidential material in 2016, then he needed to be more than mayor at that time.”

Few prominent Hispanic Democrats are positioned to be considered for vice president in 2016, but several Republicans are thought to be prospects for their party’s next ticket, including Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico.

“That puts them in a bit of a pinch, and this may be an effort to move the pieces around on the chessboard,” Danny Diaz, a strategist who advises Ms. Martinez, said of the Democrats.

Given how crucial Hispanics’ votes were in Mr. Obama’s two victories, some Democrats believe that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, should she run and win the nomination, would be wise to pick a Hispanic running mate.

Mr. Castro is one of the leading voices predicting that changing demographics will eventually favor Democrats. “A couple years ago, I said Republicans should enjoy it because it’s not going to get any better for them,” he said, “and it’s only getting better for Democrats moving forward.”

The San Antonio Express-News first reported that Mr. Castro had been offered a cabinet post and was undergoing the standard background vetting, but the newspaper had not identified which position he would take. The Democrats who described the fuller cabinet shuffle on Saturday asked not to be identified because the plans had not been announced. The White House declined to comment.

The HUD job would become available to Mr. Castro with Mr. Donovan’s move to the budget office, replacing Ms. Burwell. She would succeed Kathleen Sebelius, who announced last month that she was resigning as secretary of health and human services after presiding over the disastrous rollout of the online exchanges for the Affordable Care Act in the fall.

While not formally part of the statutory cabinet, the budget office position has cabinet rank under Mr. Obama, and its director can play an outsize role in shaping administration policy.

Mr. Donovan, a former commissioner of housing preservation in New York City and an original member of Mr. Obama’s cabinet, has been a favorite of the president’s. At a Democratic fund-raiser on Wednesday in New York, Mr. Obama offered effusive praise for Mr. Donovan, singling out his work on recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy.

“When we thought about who was somebody who we had confidence” could take on the task, “Shaun came to mind,” Mr. Obama said. He added that Mr. Donovan had “done a terrific job.”


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