Why Hillary Should Choose Julian Castro As V.P.

So, it looks like Hillary Rodham Clinton has likely narrowed her search for a Vice President to three — Elizabeth Warren, Tim Kaine, and Julian Castro. I would strongly encourage her to choose the latter. Here’s why:

I love Elizabeth Warren and she would be a great attack dog against Donald Trump. I’m not really worried about having two women on the ticket. But Warren is still a relative newcomer to politics, the Democrats can ill afford to lose her Democratic seat in the Senate, and she has little or no executive experience should the VP be forced to assume the mantle of the presidency. She has plenty of time to develop herself and her experience. Warren has an bright future in any case.

Tim Kaine (who by the way described himself as “boring” on MSNBC’s Meet the Press yesterday morning) is hardly a household name. He is the junior senator from Virginia (an important state which he could deliver on election night) and has executive experience as the 39th Lieutenant Governor and 70th Governor of that great State. However, once again, we can ill afford to lose a solid Democrat in the Senate plus, as another left-of-center Democrat, he will not bring anything new to the Clinton ticket.

On the other hand, Julian Castro certainly would! He is a young 41, attractive and charismatic, and currently serves in the Obama Cabinet as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He has executive experience, having served as major of San Antonio. While he obviously has an Hispanic heritage, Castro’s Texas roots go back to 1920. He graduated from Stanford and has a law doctorate from Harvard. He is a Roman Catholic while Secretary Clinton is a devout Methodist.

Julian Castro would balance Hillary in almost every other conceivable way as well. He could deliver Texas and perhaps other Western states while she is strongest on the East coast. He is young; while she is not (same age as me…that makes her…old!). He would have overwhelming Latino support while Hillary will sweep the women and African Americans. Once the young Sanders’ supporters get to know him, they will appreciate his youth and energy as well as his ideas.

I would love to see a Clinton-Castro ticket and believe it would immediately serve to breathe some excitement into a campaign which desperately needs some at this point. Imagine having Julian serve as special trade ambassador to Latin America as Joe Biden has taken on special assignments in this Administration!

Oh, and Julian Castro has a twin brother (Joaquin) who currently serves in the U.S. House of Representatives. They could trade off when the travel schedule gets overwhelming!

 

 

 

 

 

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