Posted on 01/31/2015 10:20:25 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
LOS ANGELES — Backstage on Friday night at CBS Studio Center, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro was about 30 minutes from appearing live on the edgy HBO comedy show “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
He was cramming for his spot on the show’s panel, reviewing topics with Scott Carter, the show’s executive producer.
Castro should expect to talk about the Koch brothers, Mitt Romney, Saudi Arabia. Carter peppered the congressman with questions. Castro, 40, offered one-sentence answers.
“Do not feel like you have to be concise for us,” Carter said. “If anything, be expansive.”
Another topic Maher might cover: The Iowa Freedom Summit, hosted last month in Des Moines by U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, and attended by likely Republican presidential hopefuls, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. King once compared immigrants to dogs. Shortly before the summit, he called an undocumented immigrant a “deportable.”
“I’ll have plenty to say about that,” promised Castro, D-San Antonio.
Raising his national profile, for the past two days the congressman had been speaking expansively in back-to-back meetings across Los Angeles. He toured Sony Pictures Studio, paid a home visit to Democratic activists, held a fundraiser and introduced himself to wealthy donors.
Shuttling between luxury hotels in Beverly Hills, Castro was a long way from the West Side of San Antonio, where he’d grown up poor with his twin brother, former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro.
Elected to Congress in 2011, Joaquin represents a district that encompasses much of the West Side.
His brother, now Housing and Urban Development secretary, also was in Los Angeles last week, helping to count the city’s homeless population. Should Hillary Clinton win the Democratic nomination, Julián could land on her vice presidential short list.
The twin stars of the Democratic Party aren’t new to the City of Angels.
In 2012, actress and political activist Eva Longoria threw a fundraiser here for Joaquin; at a second fundraiser, former President Bill Clinton compared the Castros to the Kennedys and suggested that Julián one day would be president. The twins had just appeared onstage together at the Democratic National Convention, where Julián delivered a keynote address that shot the pair to stardom.
The ability to thrive in such diverse environments is rare, said Cal Jillson, professor of political science at Southern Methodist University.
“It is a huge political talent to be natural on the West Side of San Antonio and in the sort of thin air of Hollywood,” Jillson said. “And only a few politicians really have that. Obama had it. … And the Castro brothers have it, and relatively few others. Ted Cruz, for example, doesn’t necessarily have it. He’s not going to be terribly comfortable on the West Side of San Antonio or in Hollywood. But he might be just fine in Des Moines.”
Indeed, King told Bloomberg Politics that Cruz “exceeded expectations” at the Iowa summit, where the senator issued a call to padlock the Internal Revenue Service and send its agents to secure the border that runs from Southern California to South Texas.
“Now, I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheeck,” Cruz told an adoring audience of conservatives. “But think about it for a second. Imagine you’ve traveled thousands of miles through Central America, through the heat. You’re swimming across the Rio Grande, and the first thing you see is 110,000 IRS agents. You’d turn around and go home, too.”
Joaquin pays close attention to such rhetoric. For one, he’s the only Castro twin free at the moment to fight it. As a member of the Obama administration, his brother, Julián, is constrained in his political speech.
“I have always thought it is very difficult to serve an American president,” Jillson said, “because even as a Cabinet officer, you are forced to begin every sentence with 'the president believes X.’”
And Joaquin could find himself battling Cruz for his Senate seat in 2018. More than ever before, the Castro twin sometimes seen as living in his brother’s shadow is spoiling for a tough fight.
First, however, Texas must change.
'Voice’ of Democrats
Two nights before venturing onto Real Time with Bill Maher, Joaquin sat in a well-appointed home in historic Windsor Square. The Democratic activists he’d come to greet were agitated, and they used colorful language to express it.
Republicans, they said, are diabolical, sinister and crazy, terrorists who desire a slave nation. And for the past 25 years, they’ve also been brilliant — in winning office and stalling the efforts of Democrats.
Joaquin listened politely and offered more moderate observations.
“If you meet (Cruz) in person, he’s not as confrontational as he comes across,” he told them.
Yet, Joaquin himself knows frustration.
His mother, Rosie, fought for social justice and was jailed twice for civil disobedience. Joaquin and Julián were 8 when their parents separated and their father, Chicano activist Jesse Guzman, moved out. Rosie continued her activism, but Guzman would grow disillusioned.
“He burned out,” Joaquin told the activists. “He got very frustrated with the political process. And I can understand that. What I see in a lot of people is … they feel like their efforts will never pay off.”
Joaquin also knows perseverance. As a Democrat, he has spent his career in the minority party, first in the Texas House, now in the U.S. House of Representatives. His own efforts to enhance legislation often are blocked.
Last month, the congressman authored an amendment to a House bill funding the Homeland Security Department that would allocate $1 million for rape kits in immigrant detention centers. The House Rules Committee, chaired by Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas, declined to include it.
“There have been instances and allegations of rape,” Joaquin said. The centers “aren’t properly equipped to investigate cases or treat victims. It’s a tragedy that the Congress would let partisan politics override the concern for these women and children. … They just wouldn’t allow any Democratic amendment.”
On Thursday at a law firm in Los Angeles, Joaquin again discussed obstructionism, this time to a roomful of Democratic donors convened by Matthew Johnson, an entertainment lawyer he met through Longoria. He spoke about “the infrastructure of opportunity” in America, a theme he has deployed since running for Congress four years ago.
“When I see a Ted Cruz, when I see someone who is reworking this country to undo the infrastructure of opportunity that our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents spent time building up, it is a retreat from a place of opportunity,” Castro said.
After the meeting, Johnson gushed about his guest from Texas.
“He is the voice of the Democratic Party,” said the lawyer, who has represented Oprah Winfrey and LeBron James. “He is the future of the Democratic Party.”
A beat later, Johnson added, “He and his brother.”
Removing the noise
In November, that future receded, at least in Texas.
In a rout unabated for two decades, Republicans eviscerated Democrats in statewide elections. Joaquin had doled out campaign funds in the loss, giving tens of thousands of dollars respectively to Wendy Davis, Leticia Van de Putte, Battleground Texas and the state Democratic Party.
He’s ready to regroup and keep fighting.
Part of that effort is personally raising funds: at least $50 million to help make Texas more competitive for Democrats in statewide elections. The money could help Democrats confront Republicans in paid media during legislative sessions.
Last week's trip to Los Angeles was less about raising funds than increasing Joaquin's political cachet. His political director would not say how much he raised on the trip, but it was just a sliver of his overall goal.
“If you’re not willing to call out the other side when they do bad things, why should the people of Texas believe they’re doing bad things?” Joaquin said. “Unless you change that, unless you become more assertive, unless you call these guys to the mat, Texas is not going to change. We’ll be sitting here in 10 years still talking about, 'Will one day the state change?’”
Henry Muñoz III believes it will, thanks in no small part to Joaquin and his trips to locales such as Los Angeles.
“I have no doubt that he can raise $50 million,” said Munoz, finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “… He’s a really good fundraiser and a very effective spokesman.
“Joaquin on his own is an important national leader,” Munoz added. “I see it. As he travels across the country, I watch it. Something is going to happen with him that is going to make him more integral to the future of the country than he is today, and where he is today is pretty good.”
Longoria also emphasized fundraising is critical.
“There are many points of intervention in a political process,” she said. “A big part of it is donor support.”
Joaquin is “definitely the hope of the Democratic Party, not only because of his experience in the Legislature, and not only because he’s Hispanic, but because he’s relatable,” she added. “He’s just practical and reasonable. He removes the noise in politics today and he gets down to the root of the issues.”
With the cameras rolling on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Joaquin kept his comments concise.
“Steve King is one of those people that I think wakes up mad at the world,” he said when Maher brought up immigration. “He wants people to be mad at the world with him. He sows peoples’ fear and anger. And it was so sad to see all of those Republican presidential candidates go there and bow to someone like that.”
It wasn’t necessarily expansive, but the remark packed the sort of punch that his brother, serving the president, can’t throw at the moment. Still outnumbered but in the spotlight, Joaquin Castro plans to keep swinging.
I stopped reading at the mention of luxurious hotels Mr. Castro stays in. Who paid for that, I wonder.
Both Castro brothers need to be taken down...ASAP.
One very well could be the 2016 nominee.
The DemocRATS sure do love their America-hating, La Raza commie fags.
Why wouldn’t He be popular in L.A. he’s a socialist, he’s a Hispanic and his last name is Castro! It’s like a trifecta for the liberal Hollywood elite I bet they all pissed themselves in excitement.
Steve King compared “immigrants” to dogs?
ROTFLMAO
You intellectually lazy jack asses expect us to fall for fairytale characterization?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c-hsLnPQO4
1st. It was a metaphor.
2nd. He was discussing the difference between those who immigrate here legally and under the law, to become citizens.
Those people are the cream of the crop.
3rd. The example of using best of breed and good hunting dogs vs dogs that won’t hunt is a metaphor anyone but, tards could understand.
Similarly, you lay down with a dog that has fleas, don’t be surprised when you wake up with fleas.... I am not talking about immigrants of any kind here but, giving an example of metaphors that all people use to illustrate their point.
Love the way you cleverly wrote the two sentences though. “Alot” of people might make the mistake that it was Ted Cruz who gave the metaphor....
But, you’ll keep atrying...
They are odinga, but worse. They also look like they have videos of both of them in compromising positions with each other and a Malaysian boy.
How much do they pay to count the homeless? He flew all the way to LA to count homeless? Do they not have anyone in LA that can do that?
Re: “Those who immigrate here legally and under the law, to become citizens...are the cream of the crop.”
That’s really depressing.
About 40% of legal Hispanic immigrants lack a high school education.
And legal Hispanic immigrant families use public welfare at three times the rate of native born white families.
Unless White Texans are banned from voting, the Communist Castro brothers will be old men before Texas becomes Democrat. At least they sound more reasonable than their Communist mother, who considered Texas part of Mexico and wanted to destroy the Alamo
Her poor discriminated sons graduated from Ivy League schools and have plush govermnment jobs, paid for by US taxpayers who can’t afford to send their children to college. Our spoiled-rotten minorities will be furious when other people’s money runs out.
We live 30 miles from San Antonio. The swooning over the Castro twins in the local media is ridiculous.
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