Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Henry Cisneros believes that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is intent on picking current HUD secretary Julian Castro as her running mate.
“What I am hearing in Washington, including from people in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, is that the first person on their lists is Julian Castro,” Cisneros said in an Univision interview that aired on Sunday. “That they don’t have a second option, because he is the superior candidate considering his record, personality, demeanor and Latin heritage. I think there is a very high possibility that Hillary Clinton may choose Julian Castro.”
As The Hill noted, “Castro has followed a political path similar to the one Cisneros traveled in the 1990s” when “Cisneros served as Mayor of San Antonio and was then HUD secretary under President Bill Clinton.” But Cisneros “ultimately left the Clinton administration in the shadow of a scandal about payments he had made to a former mistress. He later pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI and was pardoned by Clinton.”
Castro, who appeared at a March Center for American Progress event with Clinton, essentially ruled out running for Texas governor in 2018 in a recent interview with MSNBC, saying that was not on his radar screen. When host Jose Diaz-Balart asked him about the vice presidential rumors, Castro said he had “no comment.”
Clinton is reportedly running as “the most liberal Democratic front-runner in decades” because she is projecting that minorities will comprise 31% of the 2016 electorate compared to 28% in 2012 and 26% in 2008.