Wikipedia joaquin castro biography channel

On a summer sunrise in 1999, Joaquin and Julián Castro pulled up in finish of a double-wide trailer expert few miles outside San Antonio.

The twins, back home be introduced to break before their final era at Harvard Law School, esoteric come to seek wisdom concentrate on advice from Lionel Sosa, orderly Republican political sage who ran the largest Hispanic advertising organizartion in America. (He was experience in the trailer while climax family's new home was exploit built nearby.) Politicos across distinction country knew Sosa as glory ad man and consultant who'd helped Texas Republicans win great chunks of the Hispanic poll, and who'd led outreach efforts for Ronald Reagan's and Martyr H.W.

Bush's presidential campaigns. In the near future, Sosa would be advising Martyr W. Bush during his Snowy House run.

Sosa didn't know greatness Castro brothers, but he upfront know not to expect right-wingers. Their mother, Rosie Castro, abstruse been a fiery community register in San Antonio during honourableness Chicano movement of the Decade and '70s; after an fruitless run for city council put over 1971, three years before Joaquin and Julián were born, she'd remained a political force force San Antonio, chairing the division chapter of La Raza Unida, a Chicano third party, settle down running other progressives' political campaigns.

The twins had grown dialect tagging along to rallies, parades, and political functions. As Julián recalled in a college composition later published in an hotchpotch called Writing for Change, public slogans "rang in my wear down like war cries": "Viva Iciness Raza!" "Black and Brown United!"

It was Rosie Castro who difficult to understand reached out to Sosa; significance two had met at spruce forum on the future get through Latinos in America.

Her boys, she told him, were plotting to return to San Antonio and pursue some kind make famous public service after they continuous. Would Sosa mind speaking condemnation them?

Joaquin and Julián sat depose in the trailer, Sosa says, and began to pepper him with questions: Where do sell something to someone think San Antonio is headed?

Who should we know? Funding a while, Sosa turned glory tables and asked them one: What did they see mop the floor with their futures? The way Sosa remembers it, the brothers beggared out into big grins near told him, in unison, "We're going to be mayor past its best San Antonio."

"We're going to do an impression of mayor?" Sosa said.

"Which one?"

"One of us will," said disposed of the brothers.

Sosa, who's just now semiretired, can recount little if not about the conversation that date, or what counsel he gave the Castros. But their juncture reply, he says, stuck house him: "That's the one crooked that got seared into tongue-tied mind.

They knew what they wanted in life." And they knew that they wanted dressingdown attain it together.

Rosie Castro's Chicano activism inspired her sons, in spite of they took a more medium path. (Rick Kern/Getty Images apply for HBO)

I RECENTLY SPENT two months in the Castros' orbit, use just after Election Day stand firm mid-January, interviewing and observing them in Washington and San Antonio, together and separately.

They crapper be salty-tongued, charming, funny, cranium withering, especially when it be handys to other politicians. Former jihad staffers attest to their burning tendencies—particularly on the other's gain. "Any mistake on Joaquin's ambition, and you are messing take up again Julián," says Christian Archer, who's managed races for both brothers.

The same goes for Julián's campaigns, when Archer says Joaquin has been "as aggressive pass for I've ever seen him," difficult fundraising totals or email analytics.

But I also found the brothers exceedingly careful, even for public wunderkinds on the rise, ploy cloak their candid sides. Advance almost every conversation we confidential, they danced back and thither between being on the enigmatic and off the record—sometimes foreign one sentence to the go along with.

By the end of address time together, I half-expected them to begin their lunch immediately by asking the waiter, "Can this be on background?"

Maybe their reticence shouldn't be surprising; afterward all, they've now got shipshape and bristol fashion lot to lose. Fifteen time eon after visiting Sosa, the Socialist brothers' political horizons have broadened well beyond San Antonio.

Joaquin, after a decade in decency Texas House, won a settee in Congress in 2012 opinion soon became a fixture joining together Sunday talk shows, a go-to surrogate for President Obama's in-migration and economic policies. But justness spotlight shines most intensely intervening Julián, the San Antonio politician who vaulted into the nationwide consciousness with his keynote address—the first by a Latino—at excellence 2012 Democratic National Convention.

Burgle year, when Julián left rendering mayor's job to join Obama's Cabinet as Housing and Urbanized Development secretary, the move afflicted widespread speculation that he was being positioned as a developing 2016 vice presidential pick be a symbol of likely nominee Hillary Clinton. Omitting that, Texas Democrats have humiliate yourself envisioned Julián—or maybe Joaquin?—as interpretation state's first Latino governor.

Blunder as a U.S. senator. Stretch maybe both.

"The whole idea ensure they could be governor, ward-heeler, vice president, president—it excites people," Rosie Castro told me. "Everybody is waiting for the greatest Latino governor of Texas. Every person is waiting for that be in first place Latino president or vice president." And no two Democrats muddle better placed to realize specified expectations than Rosie's sons.

Nobility Republican Party, despite its struggles to attract Latino voters, has more Latino politicians with popular profiles and prospects—Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, for starters, along with Govs. Susana Martinez and Brian Sandoval. For Democrats, at least for the period being, such hopes hang in the main on the Castro brothers.

They downside, it seems, the chosen ones: whip-smart, telegenic politicians who've alighted in the right political piling at the right political put on ice.

Their life story has clean up fairy-tale quality that reporters playing field mythmakers can't resist: Born scrutinize Mexican Independence Day. Raised preschooler a grandmother who immigrated obviate the United States as eminence orphan with a fourth-grade nurture and a mother who tall story, organized, and was twice confined for civil disobedience in glory cause of giving the go along with generation—her sons, in particular—opportunities she never had.

Worked their means up from the barrios unnoticeably Stanford, then Harvard, then skirt of the country's most uplifting law firms. Elected to state offices before age 30. General darlings at 40. Even providing Julián never becomes vice big cheese or president—even if neither fellow ever wins a statewide work in Texas—theirs is already fair quintessential an American success recital that Eva Longoria, best mask for her role in Desperate Housewives, has sold ABC outwit a political and family sight series she's producing based cease the Castros.

Working title: Pair of Aces.

The brothers understand rectitude power and usefulness of prestige larger-than-life stories that have adult up around them. But with is at least one digress they're eager to shoot down: the "we're going to last mayor" anecdote that Lionel Sosa tells. "That's not true," Julián Castro says flatly. "I was never so arrogant to limitation that I would someday pull up mayor.

Maybe I said, 'Oh, I'm thinking about running execute city council.' " Sure, be active says, "I certainly think that's [Sosa's] recollection. But I gravely, seriously doubt that." It's say publicly type of fable, he says, that "people develop in their mind, and it sounds positive. But it's the stuff confiscate embellishment."

Then again, Julián may joke forgetting something himself.

In 1997, two years before the brothers met with Sosa, they difficult to understand been profiled in a San Antonio newspaper as they tied off to Harvard Law (headline: "Double the Talent, Twice decency Ambition"), and Julián had tacit about even higher goals outstrip the one Sosa recalls: "We do not consider the control centre of governor or [U.S.] wirepuller an impossibility," he told honesty reporter.

Today, the Castro brothers capture pains to be humble.

On the other hand they've always had ambition paddock abundance. Their precipitous rise has been the result of lanky aspirations, careful calculation, ferocious faithfulness, and deep political pragmatism—qualities say publicly brothers have long shared wallet mutually cultivated. "Growing up, Irrational think what's helped my fellow and I is, we were so competitive with each other," says Joaquin.

"Because we're derive the same field, it's legitimate us to talk almost normal. Lets you identify strengths arm weaknesses in your arguments." Colin Strother, a Texas political connoisseur who has worked on Joaquin's campaigns, puts it more sketchily. "You see this synergy let fall Bill and Hillary," he bad me. "Steel sharpens steel."

EVEN Apply for TWINS, Julián and Joaquin were unusually tight-knit from their early days.

They played the amount to sports, studied the same subjects, and, in middle school, level dated girls with almost twin names: Veronica Gonzalez and Speedwell Gonzales. They communicated with hose down other in often-unspoken ways go off at a tangent frequently were beyond the release of everyone around them.

They under no circumstances truly grew apart.

"It even-handed one of the most dynamic relationships that two people could share," Archer says. Even name marrying, starting families, and next their different political paths overlook San Antonio, Austin, and at the moment Washington, they remain incredibly seal. (Julián wed Erica Lira, be thinking about elementary school teacher, in 2007; they have a 5-year-old female child and a son who was born in December.

Joaquin one Anna Flores, who works own a San Antonio tech on top of, in 2013; they have neat as a pin 1-year-old daughter.) "They're not respite people to get to know," says their longtime friend Diego Bernal, who served on glory city council when Julián was mayor. As children, they "were the whole world to getting other," says their mother, Rosie.

It was "hard to enter that."

Neither of the brothers evolution naturally outgoing; they've had appoint learn to master the glad-handing, baby-kissing, money-asking skills required archetypal politicians. Julián likes to discipline that in high school elegance would often talk to cardinal or three people the whole day—and one of them was his brother.

"I was sob the life of the party," as he puts it. "Still am not." Joaquin was on all occasions the slightly more sociable one: He'd make friends, who would, in turn, become Julián's cast as well. "Julián has each been more introspective," Rosie says. "If I had let him, he'd stay home, hang posse the house. Joaquin, too, however he also likes an bolt, being out in the world."

Spend enough time around them, peach to enough of their company, and you pick up at a low level differences: Julián speaks more mumble, in a slightly deeper voice; Joaquin's face is slightly thicker (though the clue I inoperative, when both brothers were accumulate, was the FitBit that Joaquin wears).

But the twins have all the hallmarks to share almost everything else—including the fact that they maintain perplexing tastes in music. Although a teenager, Julián once took a CD of theme songs to TV shows like The Golden Girls and Cheers to a New Year's Eve anniversary, and he's been known ingratiate yourself with jam to Kenny Rogers ahead Barry Manilow.

Joaquin's tastes unnatural from Joan Baez to Composer Swift, with a particular kinship for bands (Matchbox 20, Appendix Crows) from the late '90s, which he once called "a renaissance in music."

In part, grandeur brothers grew inseparable because they helped to raise each second 1. Rosie was the opposite come within earshot of a helicopter mom; she was stretched thin, between work famous politics and single-mothering, but she was also determined to set in motion "the guys," as she calls them, out into the artificial.

Her immigrant mother, Victoria, effortless $8 a day as a- maid, cook, and babysitter authentication the north side of San Antonio; and while her be silent worked, Rosie's guardian held firm to her as a little one, forbidding her to even run next door to play mess up the neighbors. (Rosie did from time to time accompany her mother on wise three-bus commute to work, notwithstanding, and recalls spending time sharp ticks off the dogs turn belonged to one of stifle mother's employers.) Rosie encouraged Joaquin and Julián to enjoy primacy kind of freedom she on no account had as a child; they both still remember, the season when they were 9, sport the bus downtown by child to see The Karate Kid at a sketchy theater thumb fewer than five times.

Their coat wasn't all that far self-possessed from the poverty of Rosie's youth, especially after Rosie squeeze the twins' father, a Chicano activist and math teacher labelled Jesse Guzman, separated in 1983 (they never married).

Joaquin enthralled Julián were 8 when their dad left. They moved congregate Rosie and their grandmother telling off a modest house near edge your way of Rosie's cousins. The Castros went without a car backer years, and for a span, when the boys were generate high school, had to bet on money from friends make something stand out Rosie was laid off.

The boys still saw their father graceful regularly on weekends and took summer fishing trips to Store State Park.

When I rung to Guzman in December unbendable a west-side Mexican joint dubbed Laguna Jalisco, he talked start again his pride in the twins—"I'm very humbled by everything they do"—and recalled one big contravention he noticed between them. "Julián had a graceful way replicate casting his line out take.

Have you read A Queue Runs Through It? Reminds job of that book. Julián recumbent all his tackle and was very organized. But Joaquin didn't like fishing."

Julián and Joaquin condone each other to excel. They studied Japanese (Julián) and Teutonic (Joaquin) at a language-intensive growing high school in the central city (a childhood friend describes it as a "maximum-security nucleus school").

They enrolled in darkness classes and summer school straightfaced they could finish high academy a year early. "Part disseminate the reason that we were so looking toward the progressive, toward success, is because incredulity had grown up of plain means, and we were each worried about falling back," Joaquin says. "You want to suspect sure—I'm going to be Pretext, I'm going to be OK."

The elation that Joaquin significant Julián felt upon opening their acceptance letters to Stanford break open the spring of 1992 was replaced by sadness and detect nerves on the morning promote to Sept.

23—even now, Julián recalls the exact date—when they waved good-bye to their parents innermost a crowd of friends station well-wishers who'd come to sway them off at the San Antonio airport. Their father, thanks to Julián tells it, must hold purchased "the cheapest ticket adorned Southwest Airlines he could find"; the flight connected twice, pimple El Paso and San Diego, before it reached San Francisco.

"It was the first fluster we'd been away from phone call family," Julián recalled last period in a talk at Notre Dame. "We cried halfway thicken El Paso on the jet plane, sitting next to each other."

WHEN LUIS FRAGA gazed out put an end to the roomful of students effort his urban politics course, significant noticed something that gave him a start: two look-alike brothers seated dead center in rule classroom.

Before long, Fraga, significance only Latino political scientist hypnotize Stanford's campus at the day, came to know Joaquin charge Julián Castro as two declining the savviest students he'd in any case taught. "It was immediately tower to me," Fraga says, "that they had an understanding declining politics that was deeper outstrip any other college sophomores I'd come across."

The brothers matriculated be sold for Palo Alto as the chief high-tech boom was beginning.

Concerning Stanford students at the past included Peter Thiel, later glory iconoclastic founder of PayPal, build up David Sacks, who would be busy on to sell his on top of, Yammer, for $1.2 billion ground own the most expensive manor in San Francisco. Silicon Valley's high-rolling economy and entrepreneurial lore was a far cry distance from life on the west conscientious of San Antonio, and integrity brothers felt some culture shock—plus a bit of defensiveness gaze at where they came from.

"I had a chip on unfocused shoulder about San Antonio," Julián says. The brothers doubled upheaval on their hometown pride, urgency their entrepreneurial classmates to "consider San Antonio" after graduation. On the contrary they also learned new control to think about solving business problems, Fraga says. "It was an atmosphere of creativity instruction thinking about technology as first-class potential source of solutions suggest all kinds of things.

Ramble made a big impression get there Julián."

In their junior year, both brothers ran for the partisan senate on the left-leaning People's Platform—and another mythmaking moment was born. There were 10 places open, in a multicandidate take. Joaquin and Julián created section campaign fliers, but posted them in the same strategic acne around campus—bathroom stalls.

(Fraga, who became their senior adviser leading then a friend, still calls them the "Stall Twins.") Profession election day, the brothers fitting exactly the same number condemn votes—811—on their way to work out the top vote-getters. A front-page story in The Stanford Daily posed the brothers sitting consecutive in the university's historic Tombstone Court.

Reading the article, order about can practically see them pronounceable their eyes at the reporter's "What's it like to acceptably a twin?" questions. "We don't particularly subscribe to twins acceptance ESP," Julián is quoted chimpanzee saying. "We get asked renounce question millions of times."

Some twenty-four hours began to appear between decency brothers at Stanford.

While they mostly took the same rule, they chose not to make ready together. The summer before their junior year, they were unconnected for months when Julián went to Washington as an dr. in the Clinton White Deal with. In the fall of their senior year, when Joaquin was hired as a resident helpmate in his dormitory, he change, for the first time, loftiness weight of following in authority brother's footsteps.

(Julián had antiquated an R.A. the year before.) "I don't think I outspoken as well in the job," Joaquin says, "because I change like I could [only] kiss and make up the job because he challenging done it."

In politics, too, punch was becoming clear that Julián—the elder brother by one minute—would go first.

By their position year at Harvard Law, Julián had already decided to canter for the San Antonio Knowhow Council. (Hence the visit profit Lionel Sosa, who knew San Antonio politics as well orangutan anyone.) During their final best, the brothers launched the jihad from Cambridge. They called neighborhood-association leaders, wrote letters to limited businesspeople, and flew home alignment weekends whenever they could barter meet and greet prospective voters at community gatherings and terminus sales.

(Joaquin, who doesn't terrain golf, still owns an antiquated Ben Hogan 3-wood he hireling at one of the trade for $5.) Just before ladder, their law-school classmates threw Julián his first fundraiser. The pursuing May, three decades after Rosie lost her own campaign unexpected defeat age 23, Julián became integrity youngest council member in San Antonio history at 26.

It wasn't long before Joaquin followed suit—but on a different track.

Both brothers had been hired distrustful of Harvard by the white-shoe law firm Akin Gump Composer Hauer & Feld (Julián's Genius Council gig was not undiluted full-time job), but neither esoteric learned to love corporate protocol, to say the least. Discretion earlier, local activists had tested unsuccessfully to draft Rosie chomp through challenging a Democratic incumbent touch a chord the state House—a longtime pol who, according to Rosie, difficult developed a do-nothing reputation.

Minute Joaquin decided to take him on. Though he says dirt "agonized" over abandoning his six-figure salary, he relished the belief of going to Austin sound out work on "big-ticket issues" much as higher education and poor health care. He also wanted however escape his brother's shadow advocate strike out, at least more, on his own.

"He was now on council," Joaquin says, "and I wanted to break free something different."

With Rosie and Julián helping to run his fundraiser, Joaquin dispatched the Democratic man of the cloth easily, winning the primary resume 64 percent of the franchise. In the general election, take steps held off a Republican who'd been generously funded by violently of the biggest Anglo donors in the state.

The Socialist family celebrated another victory, on the contrary Joaquin's timing could hardly control been worse; 2002 was along with the year when Republicans won their first majority in description Texas House since Reconstruction. "I came in," Joaquin says, "when it all went to shit." So much for pushing "big-ticket" ideas.

That would become rulership brother's forte instead. But groan until Julián had experienced, put behind you the tender age of 30, his first major political setback.

In 2012, Joaquin (right) introduced rulership keynote-speaking brother to the Egalitarian Convention—and to the country. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)JU-LI-ÁN! Ju-li-án!

Ju-li-án!" Loftiness chant rose up in nobility San Antonio City Council's designer on April 4, 2002. Justness council was voting that sundown on $52 million worth summarize special tax breaks for distinction developers of a new sport resort and upscale-housing project labelled PGA Village. Competing factions difficult to understand filled the chamber seats, oppressive stickers that said "PGA No!" or "PGA Yes!" A occasional months earlier, Julián had bring in his job at Akin Gump.

(The firm's lawyers had drafted the developers' contract.) It was the highest-profile issue of authority early days in office, topmost he was hell-bent on manufacture the most of it. Julián seized the spotlight at justness hearing, sharply interrogating the developers' representatives over their claims strain the project's environmental impact (low, they said) and economic likely for the city (sky feeling of excitement, of course).

The "PGA No!" crowd ate it up, on the contrary Julián's performance went for naught: Only one of the 10 other council members voted deal him to block the deal.

The loss did nothing to weakened Julián's enthusiasm for city state. Despite the meager pay—$20 spruce meeting—he relished the nonpartisan globe of council politics.

He didn't mind that constituents would hail at all hours to moan about barking dogs or their neighbors' unkempt lawns. He was happy to attend your neighborhood-association meeting next Wednesday at 7 p.m. He even lent fine patient ear to the miserable of gadflies who regularly came to council meetings to outspread their grievances for the chosen three minutes each.

Jaime Castillo, a San Antonio Express-News man of letters who would later become Julián's deputy chief of staff, took notice of the polite care for the young council member gave the complainers. His attitude, according to Castillo, was: "These persons are here to speak persuade the body. By God, they're going to get their twosome minutes, and I'm going relate to listen."

But Julián couldn't serve embark the council forever.

At honourableness time, San Antonio had amid the strictest term limits donation the country; council members couldn't serve more than two biennial stints. (The rules have in that been loosened.) In 2004, hang together the expiration of his specially term looming, Julián decided join run for mayor.

Julián Castro was known to San Antonio voters, if he was known pull somebody's leg all, for three things: coronate youth, his family, and sovereignty loud opposition to PGA Population.

All three would be shabby against him in what became a bruising campaign—one that would ultimately lead him to dramatically reinvent his political identity.

His primary opponent, a retired appellate aficionada named Phil Hardberger, was supported by the city's business origin, which was highly suspicious magnetize the young Castro. After one council members were arrested wastage bribery charges, Hardberger used on benefit to turn Julián's inexperience dispute him; the council, he argued, needed a wiser old attitude to clean up the predicament.

Hardberger's campaign also managed fit in drum up the closest mould to a political scandal absorb the Castro brothers' career—an concern dubbed "Twingate" in the resident press. In April 2005, dull seems, with the mayoral manoeuvres in full swing, Julián become more intense Joaquin were both scheduled used to ride and wave atop say publicly city council barge in influence annual River Parade.

At distinction last minute, though, Julián says he decided to attend fine neighborhood-association meeting instead. Whatever high-mindedness reason, Joaquin ended up athletics on the barge alone. Hardberger's campaign managed to turn rendering incident into a story rob deception and political cunning, accusative the Castros of pulling unornamented fast one on the natives of San Antonio by exchanging one brother for another remit the parade.

Whether or not Twingate doomed him, Julián lost.

Birth defeat hit him hard—the cheeriness time in his life desert he'd truly tasted failure. "Elections are so determinative in lose one\'s train of thought way," he says. "There decline no, 'You wanted an A+ but you got an A,' or 'You wanted 100 proportionality but you got a 93.' The people either accepted be unhappy rejected you." But this exclusion would become a major side road point in the story panic about the Castro brothers.

A few months later, around the time get a hold the brothers' 31st birthdays, Joaquin dropped by Julián's house be infatuated with a present.

This wasn't typical: As close as they control, the Castro brothers are long way from expressive. They only not often exchange birthday gifts, they've at no time been big on "I like you's," and Julián told escapism that he could remember fondling his brother only five defender six times in their 40 years. Joaquin's gift was spruce up small volume titled How carry out Be President. Part spoof, sharing out dummy's-guide-to, the book purported sure of yourself answer the fundamental questions make out life as commander in chief: Where's the bathroom?

When improve on you get to fly be in charge Air Force One? How come untied you order pizza delivery be in opposition to the Oval Office?

Joaquin meant be a winner partly as a joke, significant says—not a prediction that her majesty brother would actually end decoy in the White House. Invective the same time, there was a message in the tribute, which Julián says he not beautiful as: "I still think tell what to do can do whatever you want."

The brothers, characteristically enough, were at present working on that.

Not well along after the election, Christian Expert, who'd run Hardberger's campaign, mottled the Castros eating lunch popular their favorite Mexican restaurant, Rosario's. He hadn't seen them by reason of Julián lost, and he proven to make himself inconspicuous creepycrawly hopes of avoiding them. They spotted him anyway. "I emit them a pleasant wave," Toxophilite recalls, "and Julián jumps be redolent of and runs over and grabs me and says, 'Would command mind having lunch with Joaquin and I?' "

The three lower ranks sat and talked for match up hours.

The Castros weren't bitter; they were curious. What upfront we do wrong? they sought to know. How did pointed choose this message, that in order of attack? "I came draw off from that with the limit respect," Archer says. "That took some real nerve and intrepidity to say, 'Help us see this.' "

Julián was convinced subside couldn't mount a successful rejoinder if the business establishment elongated to distrust him.

For rank next four years, when lighten up wasn't working personal-injury cases aim for the new Law Offices ferryboat Julián Castro—Joaquin joined the definite, of course—he worked on distinct that image completely. Julián penniless bread regularly with business cream of the crop, and, when the time came for his next shot presume the mayor's office, he chartered Archer and the rest sell like hot cakes Hardberger's '05 team to trot his campaign.

(Because of title limits, Hardberger couldn't run again.) Julián ran as an frenziedly of the real-estate developers survive bankers and tech entrepreneurs, point of view a champion of public-private partnerships as the way to coach the schools and attract newborn jobs. And he cruised know victory, winning 56 percent finance the vote in a five-candidate race.

One year later, during the time that The New York Times Magazine profiled Julián as the cutting edge Barack Obama—the Latino who'd repudiate America's next racial barrier be acquainted with the presidency—it dubbed him honesty "Post-Hispanic Hispanic Politician." Julián bristly a little at the entitle, but even so: mission accomplished.

Mayor Castro governed as he'd campaigned.

He opened a public-private college-prep center called Café College, contemporary a similar site for anxious entrepreneurs. He embraced the representation of tax abatements to seduction large employers to the seep into. He led a public-private war to revitalize San Antonio's city core. And when he embarked on his most ambitious desire, a citywide expansion of prekindergarten education called "Pre-K for SA," he persuaded the two water CEOs in San Antonio—Charles Dupe, founder of the HEB marketplace chain, and Joe Robles, intellect of the U.S.

Automobile Association—to spearhead the campaign to entrance fee a $30 million sales-tax enlarge to get it rolling.

By excellence time the voters embraced Pre-K for SA in November 2012, the Castro brothers had feet in Washington. Joaquin confidential found his ticket out stand for the sad minority in rectitude Texas House, winning his be foremost congressional election—only to join on the subject of new Democratic minority in magnanimity U.S.

House. Julián had unrestrictedly his Democratic Convention keynote saunter summer, leading to all kinds of buzz and interview requests. Shortly after the election, Obama and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett met with Julián to compute his interest in joining nobility Cabinet; they didn't specify which department, but it was straightforwardly Transportation, which didn't appeal take a look at him.

He said no, however the idea of taking uncut post in D.C. had archaic planted.

THIS PAST SPRING, President Obama and Mayor Castro were featured speakers at the LBJ Statesmanly Library's 50th anniversary celebration extract Austin. Backstage, Julián recalls, influence president sidled up to him.

"He said, 'I've been content to give you a call together. Let's talk soon.' Probably tidy week later, he called, unthinkable we had [a] conversation star as possibly joining the administration." That time, the offer was prevent run HUD—a department closer utter Julián's heart, given his urban-development efforts in San Antonio. Representation brothers also understood perfectly on top form that there was no become that the mayor of San Antonio would be tapped brand vice president.

But a teenaged Latino Cabinet member with Clinton-style moderate politics and a coin of great press? Maybe.

It wasn't an automatic call, though. Disappearance Texas would take Julián lack of restraint the path to the governor's office that so many scheduled him to follow when surmount fourth two-year term as politician (that was now the word limit) ended in 2017.

Probity timing had once sounded barely audible. Political pundits and optimistic Democrats had long expected favorable demographic trends—a whole lot of leafy people of color becoming voters, that is—to make statewide elections winnable by then, especially lend a hand the right candidate. (And take as read there were ever a "right" Democratic candidate, most agreed, spot was Julián Castro.) But get used to the much-hyped gubernatorial bid model state Sen.

Wendy Davis destined toward a historic rout—she lacking by more than 20 piece points—the revival of Texas Democrats had begun to look emerge a far more distant prospect.

When Julián asked Rosie what she thought about Obama's HUD insinuation, she said, "This is magnanimity second time he asks prickly. He's not gonna ask prickly again.

But is this property irrelevant you want to do?" Noteworthy wasn't sure. Some advisers become skilled at HUD was a dead-end employment. Others pointed out that Julián would be joining the authority during its lame-duck phase—not class optimal time for launching selective projects that could boost crown national profile.

It would joke, said Evan Smith, CEO stop The Texas Tribune, "like Toilet Stamos joining ER in excellence 13th season—show's over, man."

When forbidden took the job anyway, nippy was a sure sign go off at a tangent the Castro brothers had firm that Texas wouldn't be at odds for Democrats anytime soon.

Animation also appeared to be span bet that Julián's presence consider it Washington, and his new cut up, would make him more nice to Hillary Clinton if she became the Democratic nominee.

Still, glory brothers know that vice big cheese is a long shot—especially as, they insist, the rumors perceive their cozy links to Valuation and Hillary are patently outlandish.

Their relationship with the Clintons is friendly, they say, on the other hand far from intimate. Julián's exclusive interaction with President Clinton close to his White House internship was a photo session. The brothers endorsed Hillary over Obama response 2008—at the behest, they discipline, of old Clinton pal José Villarreal, a family friend lecturer the partner who'd hired rank twins at Akin Gump.

Tally Clinton always remembers the Castros' endorsement and thanks them considering that he sees them, Julián says, but that's only been walk out "a handful of occasions." Nobleness brothers have introduced the plague president at fundraisers in Calif. and Texas, Julián notes, become more intense "I've spoken with Hillary President twice"—once at an event fighting the University of Southern Calif.

in 2013, and once case a 2014 benefit for greatness Bronx Children's Museum, which Objectiveness Sonia Sotomayor invited them take care of. Last August, Julián dined wrestle Bill Clinton at the couple's home in Washington. "A a small amount of people try and horn bay about long, close relationships lift the Clintons," Julián says.

"We don't have a long, completion relationship." But, he adds, "I think we're on the assign page about a lot ensnare stuff."

While Julián thinks nationally, reward brother's mind keeps drifting make longer to Texas. In December, Joaquin Castro and I sat comic story the top of the 750-foot-high Tower of the Americas, gazing out on San Antonio, chatting about the brothers' past professor possible futures, Texas politics, famous the 2016 presidential race.

(Joaquin ranks Mike Huckabee as nobleness most natural politician of loftiness potential GOP field, saying explicit could "walk away" with class nomination "if he wasn't straightfaced odd.") The congressman, fresh soar an easy reelection, pointed go on a go-slow some notable spots: the brothers' old neighborhood, the spire go in for Our Lady of the Bung University on the west exterior, the place nearby where Timbered Harrelson's father killed a in alliance judge by the name vacation "Maximum John" Wood Jr.

Give soup, salad, and iced tea—both brothers' drink of choice—Joaquin talked enthusiastically about his new mission to resuscitate Texas Democrats.

"I'm on all occasions thinking about politics," he says. "What is going on here? What's missing here?" In Texas, what's missing is pretty explicate on one level: Democratic voters.

Despite the advent of Parcel Texas, a well-funded effort fixed by former Obama campaign fallen woman designed to register and range out new voters, Joaquin says there's only one way farm view the 2014 election: "We got our ass kicked." Prestige party's situation just keeps in the springtime of li more dire, he says; betwixt 2008 and 2012, Republicans went from occupying 2,400 local vote for offices in Texas to reply 3,400.

"We never learned increase to come back," he says. "We still haven't figured please the formula in Texas."

Joaquin doesn't want to supplant Battleground Texas, he explains, but to team it with some well-funded, constant hardball politics. The Legislature meets every two years for Cxl days, and every session Republicans cut more deeply into assistance for social services, he says—yet they're never held accountable shield it, come election time.

"For example, a few years retire from they wanted to cut comfort for nursing homes," he says. "I mean, that's perfect! Give orders could run that on distinction radio all day. You demand to sear it in people's brains, so the next at this point they go, 'Hey, I remember—these are the guys who loved to cut your nursing-home funding!' "

Another key, he argues, psychiatry expanding the usual targets make it to a political party.

"What campaigns do is, they target reasonable voters, consistent voters, right?" illegal says. "You need an assemblage that completely flips the manuscript. I don't want to lecture to likely voters; I long for to talk to people stray are completely, or almost quite, disengaged."

His road map for Texas Democrats is still in say publicly early stages, but if pacify had to put a fee tag on it, he'd believe upwards of $50 million.

Joaquin had meetings scheduled in Jan with potential donors in likelihood of getting things rolling. (He would not say who those funders might be.) When Crazed ask how he's planning come together run a Democratic-renewal project hill Texas while working 12-hour years in Congress, raising his adolescent daughter, and comanaging his brother's political future, he admits ramble he sometimes thinks fondly pant leaving his minority caucus make a way into Congress.

"Some of the eccentric I want to do stall be involved with in transfer Texas along, it would enter easier not to be aura elected official," he says. "Specifically, not to be a congressman."

He knows, of course, that null would benefit his Texas enterprise like a brother on representation national Democratic ticket; that would make raising $50 million straight snap.

"If he ascends, digress helps me too," Joaquin says. It works both ways, gaze at course: If Joaquin makes half-baked notable headway with his Texas project over the next yr and a half, the belief of putting a Texan reinforcement the Democratic ballot would concoct more strategic sense for leadership party's presidential nominee.

While the brothers still harbor blue-sky ambitions, they're also realists.

They know go off in the likely event Julián doesn't get the VP recognize, their political path forward instantaneously vanishes, at least unless Texas someday becomes competitive again. "Sure, I've thought about it," Julián says of having nowhere give somebody the job of go when his HUD rendezvous expires. "It's very possible.

I've thought about going back curb Texas and writing, and maybe practicing law." He's also begin, he says, to "sticking be careful somewhere in the Cabinet" pretend Clinton, or another Democrat, becomes the next president. "Most years, I'm excited about public funny turn, but there's some days, need in any profession—there's the go down days when I think star as just going back home challenging having more freedom, you know?

So we'll see what happens. The good thing is, I'm gonna be 42 when renounce day comes. Still a choose by ballot of time left."

But there psychoanalysis also a sense of exigency to the brothers' political contrivance. When we met for break bread in December at one unsaved his favorite Mexican restaurants clear up San Antonio, Julián said inaccuracy felt increasingly optimistic that unquestionable made the right move speck going to Washington.

"Joaquin attend to I were talking a incorporate of months ago," he articulated, "and I told him, 'I feel like the world shambles coming toward us in smashing positive way. More now instruction our lives than it at all will again.' "

Andy Kroll go over a Washington-based reporter for Mother Jones.