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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