 And welcome to the iconic central library, our very beautiful central library. I'm Ramiro Salazar, I'm the Director of the San Antonio Public Library. I'm pleased to welcome you here to this evening's event. We are hosting Mayor and Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Julian Castro, as he will share with us his new book, an unlikely journey waking up from my American dream. I'm also happy to have State Representative Diego Bernal with us tonight. This is the third program he has participated with us. A couple of years ago, we had our first platica. He interviewed Congressman Charlie Gonzalez and he liked that so much. He said, I'd like to do it again. So he's done it several times. So this is our platica or conversation. So we're happy to have him doing the interviewing today. Before we begin our program, I would like to recognize some folks in the audience. I'll start with our Mayor, Mayor Ron Nuremberg. Thank you, Mayor, for being here. Have our Assistant City Manager, Lori Houston. Lori, where are you, Lori? There you are. We have some members of the Library Board of Trustees. I'll start with Paul Stahl, who's our Chair. He's on his way. He told me there was a traffic jam or something. But we do have Linda Nairn representing District 10, Vice Chair of the Library Board, Judy Cruz, who is the Mayor Oral Appointee and actually Mayor Kossler telling Judy Cruz to the Board. We have Gene Brady, Immediate Past Chair, representing District 1. Welcome, Gene. Margarita De Leon representing District 3. And Andrea Sanchez representing District 4. I also want to recognize Lily Gonzales, Deputy Executive Director of the San Antonio Book Festival for helping coordinate this event. I would also like to recognize Rosy Castro. Welcome, Rosy. Thank you so much for seeing you. Thank you for giving us. Secretary Castro, thank you for bringing him here to this Earth. And also, if I may, I also want to recognize you for your efforts in helping establish the Latino collection in this past weekend. We had a very successful event. And so it's growing. Thank you so much for your contribution in that effort. And special thanks to NowcastSA, who's live streaming this event on NowcastSA.com as well as the Twig Bookshop, who is making books available for sale today. If you have not had an opportunity, you can purchase your book after the event. Secretary Castro will be signing books next door in our gallery after the event. Again, as I indicated earlier, our moderator today for this evening is Texas State Representative Diego Bernal who serves in the Texas House of Representatives representing Texas 123rd District. He's the Vice Chairman of the House Committee on Public Education, a member of the House Committee on Urban Affairs and the House Committee on House Administration. Before he was elected to the state legislature, Representative Bernal was on the City Council representing District 1, the City of San Antonio City Council. And of course, our featured author, Secretary Castro, you may recall, was elected Mayor of San Antonio in 2009 becoming one of the youngest mayors in the nation. Prior to serving as mayor, he was elected to represent City Council District 7 from 2001 to 2005. At age 26, he was the youngest city councilman in San Antonio history. Secretary Castro's impact on San Antonio's is evident. I would like to highlight and share some highlights for you in terms of his many contributions while he was serving as not only on the council but as mayor. He created SA2020, a planning program, a community-wide visioning effort to provide a forum for the community to voice their thoughts and to think big and aspire for the future. During his tenure, Secretary Castro proclaimed the decade of downtown an initiative that he collaborated with then-Council colleague Diego Bernal which sparked investment in San Antonio City Center. And as you know, San Antonio downtown is booming. Laurie plays an important role in that regard, bringing infrastructure and businesses and creating a dynamic downtown. And so I wanted to recognize Secretary Castro for starting this. He also started pre-K for SA in effort to focus on pre-kinder for our kids here in San Antonio. He also started Cafe Commerce, it's now called Launch SA. He visited the area just before we came over here to the auditorium. And Secretary Castro entered the national stage when he became the first Latino to deliver the keynote address at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Two years later, he accepted President Barack Obama's offer to join his cabinet as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. We're extremely proud of Secretary Castro and we're extremely proud to have him here today to share with you his new books, his new book. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Well, thank you, Armino, and everyone from the library for having us. This is a treat. You and I don't get to sit down and do this that often. We get to do it a bit. Or never. First of all, I think the interest in the room demonstrates that a lot of folks I think know who you are. I don't think anyone's sort of wandering around the library wondering what's going on here. That's probably true. But I also I also don't want this to be just a rehashing of the book. I want you to go buy the book. So what I thought we'd do is talk about some of the things that are in the book and then maybe go a little bit deeper in different directions. But I certainly don't want this to be the sort of Wikipedia summary of the book. I think it's important that you read his own words. I'm normally not nervous when my mother's in the audience. I'm all nervous because your mom's in the audience. She's going to give you a report card. You better be nice. Right. So so we know him as a as a phenom. We know him as a council person. We know him as a mayor. We know him as the HUD secretary. We I think we'll know him as the future leader of the New York Times bestseller list. Hopefully. But let's let's go back and I think that I think that the fact that you were raised and worn on the West side is not a secret. But but explain to people where you grew up. I mean, I think that's a catch all phrase West side. We all have an idea what that means. But talk about the place where you're from. Yeah. And first of all, thanks a lot Diego for doing this and thank you. Ramiro went to the board, many of whom I know are here to everybody that's here tonight and especially to my mother is here tonight. Yeah. I mean, you know, one of the things that I want to do is to describe the West side of San Antonio and I started the description in the book really when my grandmother arrived and the history of Mexicans who came over during the Mexican Revolution and set up essentially these neighborhoods and enclaves on the West side with their little bakeries and cleaners and some printing presses and then tried to describe the West side that Joaquin and I grew up in, you know, with dogs that would roam around the streets. Right. Like there was a pack of dogs that owned every block basically in the West side that we grew up in. It was a neighborhood we grew. We were growing up in different places, but a lot of our formative years were really only the Algo Street, which is off of Southwest 19th, not that far away from raised drive-in in that Las Palmas area. Right. You know, and it was a back then. I think that there was some sense of community. My grandmother would go and hang out with a couple of neighbors in the early evening. There was this guy that everybody used to call Wile that used to drink Milwaukee on his porch. Right. And he had a fly swatter right next to him swat the flies or the mosquitoes that would come around. But there was this sense, you know, and like we would roam around. I talk about in the book and on our bikes with our friend and play basketball, you know, there was this, this sense of community that existed there. It was also though operating against the backdrop of real deep economic and educational challenges that I also talk about. People have often heard me discuss the day that my brother and I went to orientation for instance with my mom and Rhodes Middle School and that she heard them expressed doubt about whether the kids there could get out of the eighth grade. And so that's why we ended up at the FOIA where we eventually met you. I think we were two years ahead of you. But yes, that was the West side with this deep sense of community, but also these deep challenges that, you know, operated basically as this headwind on a lot of people. At what point did you recognize those challenges? I think when kids are growing up they're not always as aware of what's happening around them, what's happening in their part of town or even on their street relative to other places. At what point did you recognize that there was something different about where you were from relative to the rest of the city? That's hard to say, but probably not until we were teenagers. You know, obviously our mother was very active even back then. I remember the 1980s, you all may remember when we had like that rollback election. Some folks in the room will remember that, the rollback election of 86. It was a very active time and my mom was participating in some of that and that was really overlaid with this sense of injustice. And she had run for city council in 1971 in part to try and equalize the kind of investments that were made in neighborhoods, including the West side of San Antonio. And so I grew up hearing about and seeing the fact that the drainage sucks over there and the streets needed repaving. And all of the basic things that you and I would come to work on later on, I mean you could see it, but it probably was in my teenage years that I started to get a sense of there's here and then there's over there and things, you know, at least a lot of things are better over there. I want to get back to that, but you write a lot in the book about your grandmother. And of course I want you to tell the story, but the primary question I have is what part of her do you see in yourself now and in your work now? I think a lot of folks have an easier time making the connection between you and your mother because both of you have lived relatively public lives. But I'm wondering as a public figure, as a father and as someone who's an author now and who's considering other things, where do you see her pop up in your own personality and in your work? No, I mean I think personality-wise we're not too far off because my grandmother was also, you know, not shy or quiet, but she wasn't the loudest person in the world, right? She was, I think probably my personality isn't too far off from hers. But also, I remember thinking, because my grandmother had diabetes, and so for the last few years of her life, like a lot of our relatives in this city, she was battling that, and she would end up in the hospital for different bouts of treatment. And eventually, right before she passed away, she had one of her legs amputated below the knee. But I remember during that time that she was very good at rolling with the punches, you know, like of the procedures, of the treatment, and I think that came out of the fact that she had this childhood that was so traumatic. She had lost her parents, and that's why she came to San Antonio, and then she, as I write about, she lost the woman basically at her new household and her new family that was like her mom, like her second mom, and so she kind of developed a stoicism, you know, in that way. And I think to some extent, not in exactly the same way, but to some extent I see that, you know, in myself. I'm sure I'm not as tough as my grandmother was because she went through a lot more than I have, but there's some of that. Do you find that keeping your composure and having a cool exterior has served you well in your work? Yeah, yeah. That exhibit hate, right? Yes. So far so good, Diego. So, let's go back to the West Side for a minute at Defoea. So instead of going in a road, you go to Defoea, and you talk about Defoea a lot. I talk about Defoea a lot. It's more Defoea classmates are in the room right now, actually. But what about that place in particular is so special? There seems to be a lot of stories and talent that comes out of Defoea. What about it do you think has made it what it is? Now, how did it affect you? Yeah, no, I've said that Defoea was the best educational experience that I had, including going to Stanford and Harvard. Because I think that everybody there had this, you know, in that multilingual program, this kind of optimism about what they could achieve. And it's not like later on folks didn't have that, but it was different. We were a different age and some of that is more expected. It was just a collection of people from around the district that were high achievers and that believed in themselves and also just had a lot of personality. You know, there were a whole bunch of characters there. And there was a lot of fun in it too because we were getting crossed into the school, you know, and most of the teachers were great teachers that really cared about making sure that we learned. Which one of those, which one of those teachers do you remember the most that left an impression on you? I hope none of them are Japanese. So I took three years in Japanese. My Japanese teacher, Miss Foster, also she was my algebra teacher, but she was also a Spanish teacher, Miss Garcia. Remember, yeah. Miss Foster was my homeroom teacher. Oh, all right. And you know, Miss Foster passed away a few years ago. I think it was her niece that reached out to me. She still had my card from when I was on the city council. And, but I hadn't talked to her probably since back then. Right. Or maybe I guess I ran into her briefly, but really hadn't talked to her in a long time. But yeah, I mean you just had a whole bunch of teachers that really cared about the students and students that cared about each other in this community that formed, I think in part because we were all part of that magnet program. And then for some people, you know, continued if they went to Bragg and Ridge, we didn't, but we probably should have, right? But it was just a great program. And one of the worst things that I think happened with this ASD is that they started to basically take away from that program over the years. I forget which superintendent it was that started to make that mistake, but it's not the program today that it was back then. Yeah. I actually did go to Bragg for a year. Like I kicked out. Well, we went for two days. Yeah. I went to Bragg for a year and I got kicked out at the last grading period and that's where I came in. Why did you get kicked out? Let me turn the interview around for a second. Why did you get kicked out? I mean, I probably, I think I told, I think I told a teacher about herself in a way that she didn't appreciate. Which was, I guess would have been part for the course at Jefferson. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I ended up at Jeff. You know, one thing about the FOIA that I think is interesting and I don't know if you've thought about it this way, but I wanted to ask, one of the interesting things about the way that they ran that MAGNA program was that even though they were bringing students in from other parts of SEISD, with the exception of the language part, we mixed with the students whose home school was the FOIA as well, right? So, to the degree there's socioeconomic diversity in SEISD, I think it brought all those kids together to learn from one another from sixth grade to eighth grade, which are formative years. I just, the more schools I visit, I think that's unique. That doesn't always happen. You can have different programs at different schools that keep the kids very separate from one another. And at the FOIA, they were all, with the exception of those courses, they were all blended together. Yeah, no, no doubt. You know, and there are friendships that were lasting with people inside that program and outside of the program there and some folks that went over to Lanier afterwards. Right. And so when you left, you ended up with friends all over the city because you had gone there. So then we get to Jefferson, right? Jefferson's fine. At what point did you decide to go or even apply to Stanford? Well, I think, you know, that one of the things that our mother gave Joaquin and me was this self-confidence and this sense that you should reach for as much as you could get, basically, or even more than you thought you could get. I think that was one of the most valuable things in my life. I'm sure many of all have parents or relatives that have given you the same sense of self-worth and self-confidence. And so we basically, Joaquin and I looked at the US News and World Report rankings, you know, those damn rankings they published that the colleges hate because if they're not number one, they're trying to figure out how they, you know, game the system to move up in the rankings. But we basically just looked at those rankings and then we applied to the top 10 or 11 schools and also, you know, we applied here to Trinity and to UT and got fee waivers to be able to apply. The mode that we were in was just try for those schools, basically. There's a, we're not going to go through each class you took at any of these schools, but there is a story, there is a story you tell that I love. Being at Stanford and having a moment where you recognize the talent level at Stanford isn't that different than the talent level of the students that you went to high school or middle school with and you sort of take stock of where you're at. Can you just sort of do the nutshell version of that for these folks? Yeah, well, I mean, and, you know, we had several of those moments really in college and law school where, you know, we had the chance, Joaquin and I had the chance to study with people from all over the country and different parts of the world and to realize once you got into it that a lot of the people that we had grown up with and gone to Duff Oil with or to Jefferson with would have been able to do just as well as we were doing or as other people were doing, but oftentimes they didn't have the opportunity that we were able to get. And sometimes, and I write about this, people wrote themselves out of that opportunity. Joaquin and I did not graduate as a valedictorian and salutatorian of our class at Yale. You know, we did very, very well, but there were some people that were ranked higher and only some of those people actually applied to those schools. And so you had a combination of realizing that a lot more of the folks that we'd grown up with could swim in those waters and do well and should get that opportunity. And then also that there was this under-matching problem to use the technical term, you know, in higher education of people not trying. You know, not, yeah, self-selecting out, writing themselves out of opportunity. And all of that was part of why I was so held back to come back and to do things like Cafe College and to try to make what I was working on first and foremost to change the educational trajectory of this city. So you decided early on, I'm skipping past city council for a second, just getting to the mayor piece, you decided early on that you, even though you're a mayor and you're at the municipal level at the city level, that there were waters that you could and should wade into with regard to education. And was that to make your experience more common to make it less special and sort of more available to other folks? Yeah, I mean, I think that Joaquin and I both had a chip on our shoulder about this city, you know, that we didn't see enough people from this city in those places. And I came back determined to make sure, not just that place or, you know, those schools, but in general, that folks would have more opportunity. And in 19, I think it was like 1979 or 1980, Cisneros had had this two-fisted approach to the future of San Antonio. And back then he was talking about improving education and then also basically what Henry's known for now, right, is the economic development that he did for those of y'all that remember the 1980s. And I felt like that they made a lot of progress on the economic development part and only very limited progress on the education part with the education partnership and the 1989 library bond issue probably being the signature pieces of his mayoral term. But I felt like I was watching all of these mayors, these city leaders come by, you know, whether it was Thornton, Peek, Garza, Hardburger, and none of them was hitting that. Like none of them was addressing what we really needed to address for the future of the city. And so, you know, it was frustrating to me, but in one way it was also teed up because I really didn't have any competition for, you know, like, oh, like Ron will know this, right? People tell you, oh, somebody's already defined by that. You know, you want to find your own thing, whatever it is, right? Like, it was wide open when it came to education too and that gave me motivation. But, you know, normally in our city, education's not the purview of the city, right? I mean, it's not like Houston or the city and the ISD are mixed together. What gave you the confidence or the drive to say we're going to break into that? Because I think that if I remember, I'm getting to pre-K right now, I remember the ISD's and there are many in the city, too many. There were terrorists worrying about all things education, not just pre-K, right? What gave you the confidence to say we're going to force through anyway? We're going to crack that code? No, because I believed that the people would accept that, that the people wanted that. Whether these institutions wanted it or not and that there was room to do that. Also, one of the prime rules of moving anything at this city level is do you have the money to do it? When they're looking at, you know, if you're going to build light rail or whatever the transportation plan is, you know, the first question you ask is, okay, well, where's the money to do this? And we had that eighth of a cent sales tax. So we had money to bring to the table. And so I knew that there was something that we could do. All right, so let's go to the eighth of a cent, right? You knew that it was unspoken for, that we could spend that money, right? Yeah. You decided, don't want to get this wrong, you decided that you wanted to spend that money on something education-related, right? But you wanted to make sure that it was spent the right way. So talk about the process of knowing that you had that money, deciding you wanted to spend it in this fear and the process to going from that to pre-K. Well, I think a lot of it wasn't just me, right? It was the community had come forward as part of SA 2020. And that was, I think for its time, a groundbreaking process because it involved people from all over the city and there was a lot of enthusiasm. And in March 2010 or March 2011, when it completed, you know, people basically said that the two most important issues that we needed to address were education and transportation. And so I knew there was a big sentiment for that. And that's what we appointed the Brain Power Task Force. And it was that task force and especially Joe Robles and Charles Budd. And with regard to pre-K, especially Charles Budd, that basically started to zero in on using those resources for early childhood education. At the beginning of that process, was it we want to do pre-K, make it work, or was it find out, scour the planet for best practices that are going to produce the results we want and come back and tell us what it is? Yeah, it was that. It was the beginning, it was basically should we spend it in the early childhood years somewhere in the middle or in higher education access and completion. And pretty early on, it was decided by the task force that we would focus on early childhood education because the research is so compelling that that's where you get the biggest bank for the bot. Right. And so talk about venturing out into the community saying, hey, you've probably not thought about this before, but I'm going to ask you to spend this remaining fraction of a cent on this idea, which I don't think anyone was expecting at all. Talk about being in the middle of that, leading the charge on that, being the tip of the spear on that. Well, I mean, I think people were receptive to it. The Lumina Foundation had come out with this analysis that ranked San Antonio 84th out of 100 different metro areas in terms of educational achievement. I think just at a personal level, it resonates with a lot of mothers and fathers that our education locally is not what it should be in a lot of these school districts. And so we needed to improve the trajectory of these young people. So, you know, I never thought that it was an especially difficult sell. There were points of it that I think were key to selling it, number one, to be straightforward with people that you were asking them to raise their taxes. You know, I would tell people, yeah, I'm asking you to raise your taxes by $7.81, you know. And for that, this is what we're going to get. And it also helped to have the support of the business community that gave it for, you know, independence, moderates, the imprimatur of, like, we need this for the future of our city, yeah. I mean, all of that helped, yeah. And it was very, very much. There were so many voices that were campaigning for that. I was one of those voices, and obviously, as a mayor, a prominent voice. But there were a lot of people that helped make that possible. And a lot of the folks that invested in that campaign, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars that helped make it happen. Yeah, you know, what's interesting is that now you sound confident. And then you were confident. It didn't feel easy to me when we were in the middle of it. I remember sitting with Councilman Saldanya thinking this is a very, very heavy lift. And our experience out in the street trying to get people to support it was, you know, we did it dutifully. And we believe in it. But we did not come back and say, this is going to pass. And on election night, I remember in 2012 that the early vote came back. And as you all know, the early vote is usually reported like by 7.15 by the election clerk. And the early vote was 50.024 to 49.98 against. So essentially, you know, tied, you know, by a few votes. And, yeah, folks will tell you that usually the more liberal or progressive candidate or measure starts to climb on election day. But that had really changed in San Antonio after the 2008 Democratic primary between Obama and Clinton where I think a lot of Democrats, you know, progressives basically started early voting more. So you couldn't bank on the same climb that you could before. So at that point, I was thinking, I think we're going to win, but it could go either way, you know. That was probably the scariest moment, you know. Well, that and then a few days before, there had been a poll that showed it at only 40, like 43% or something, that just turned out to be completely off. Right. Just like I think this poll is off and Ted Cruz is going to lose on Tuesday. But I digressed here. Oh, no, no, it's a good point. I was going to make that point. Let's just, here's what I'm going to talk about. Let's talk about Joaquin for a minute. Let's say Joaquin. He's not here. Is it safe to say that he's your best friend? And my wife, yeah. Right. Because I spend more time with her now than I do with him. That's true. That's stuff. And is it true that you guys can communicate without saying a sound? No, no. When we were at the FOIA, Miss Evans, one of the teachers there, I didn't have her. I don't know if you did. She had us take this ESP test, like with cards and we had to put them up. I'm like, what? I think there's a picture of us doing that. And I don't think it found anything. But because when you're a twin, for those of y'all that are twins or if you have twins, you know, that you're kind of a package deal, right? Like people think of you and they think you're one person. And because you look the same and people treat you the same way and you live your life having the same experiences, basically. In fact, my brother was the ultimate fact checker on this book because he was there for the whole thing. You tend to kind of interpret the world in the same way and it just makes it a lot easier to interact with somebody. So it's not that you have like this ESP, it's that you're kind of on the same wavelength, you know? But I mean, so you grew up together, you went to school together, but then you decided to go to college together and then you go to law school together. And then we went into a law firm together. You went into a law firm together and you're... Well, and he was living with me when we moved back to for a little while. He was living with you or you lived with him? No, he was living with me. I bought the house. Oh, okay, all right. All right. So I, you know, people ask me the question all the time about ego, about competition, about managing aspirations. I mean, put that to rest here. Talk about how you guys have figured that out. Well, I mean, and I write in the book, you know, folks who read it will see that it's... That was some of the most fun part to write, which was about the competition between my brother and me. And we were very competitive, you know, in sports, in school, when we were growing up. And I think that that made us better, you know, that that actually made both of us better at sports and school. But one of the neat things about growing up and becoming more mature in your relationships is just like your relationship with your parents is not the same at the age of 15 and 35, right? Like, it matures. Our relationship as siblings has changed. And now we're each other's best friend and advisor and supporter and more collaborative really than competitive. You know, I didn't really get to write about it in the book, but after I lost the 2005 mayor's raise, you know, at the time I was down and I thought that I wasn't going to get back into politics and all this stuff. I remember that I think a few weeks after I lost, my brother came to my house and he gave me this book. You know, like that series, Whatever for Dummies, you know, that series, it wasn't exactly that, but it was kind of like a spoof book. Well, I think that's that Dummies series is a serious series. So this was a spoof, but it was like how to be president, you know, but it was a little gesture, but it was kind of saying, you know, I love you and I believe in you. And I believe that you have a future in public service if you want it. And so you should think about like none of this stuff of don't get that, you know, like, I'm not going to do it anymore. Like think about continuing. And so our relationship has basically matured since we were teenagers. And so you're one another's number one advisor. Yeah, for sure. And whenever a decision is made, that's the first call. That's the first conversation. Politically, yeah. I'm sure he called Anna for a lot of others. Yeah, yeah. Or my mother. So let's talk about politics for a minute. I think that that, by the way, I'm asking a lot of questions that people have asked me as if I know and I don't know. So one question that I get quite a bit is considering your mother and her background and her sort of historic history in our city, there seems to be a decision by you and your brother to focus on elected office as a way of serving people as opposed to, let's say, outright capital A activism. Was that a conscious decision? Is there a reason for that? And what about public service gives you motivation to continue? Yeah, you know, during my grandmother's time, it would have been unthinkable for somebody for a woman like her and then Latina to hold public office. I mean, even, you know, to go and get a college degree somewhere, there are very few. But my mother came of age during the 60s and during this period of tumult and activism, but there was still kind of this ceiling, you know, in terms of getting into politics and being successful. And I talk in the book about her running for city council with the Committee for Body Obediment in 1971 and that slate of four people that ran and all of them lost. I see the decision by my brother and me to go into politics in the public service as a gift from that generation, basically, that they worked hard for so that we knew we could actually go into it and win and become office holders. They worked so that we could do that. I mean, you know, they pushed for single member districts that came about in 1977. She ran in 71 before there were single member districts in San Antonio. At the national level, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was extended to Hispanics in 1975, folks will remember. And the poll tax had just been eliminated in 1966, I want to say. And so you have all of these changes, basically, improvements in the country and the community living up to its ideals that allows my generation to say, well, of course we can go into politics and win. But that was different from, I think, what was available to previous generations. And so who was first? You were a council person before your brother was a state representative, is that right? Yeah, so I got elected in 01 and then he ran and got elected in 02. That's right. I remember. Okay. I was in law school. I remember. What I wish I could do is cut to your mother and say, how did it feel to watch your son win an election after all the work you've done? But I think that it's a tremendous payoff and a tribute to you. We've brought up Erica a couple of times. How did you know she was the one? And was the chapter convinced? I felt like I had to convince her, of course. Yeah. In fact, in the book, I write about our first date, which was at Mithiera on, I think it was May 26, 1999. You're weird that way. I can remember dates pretty well. That's an important one. It's been 20 years in May since we went on our first date. And it freaked me out because we went and we sat down and I ordered my food like we were going to order and she didn't order anything. So I thought that since she didn't order anything that she wanted to get out of there as soon as she could. So I ordered like the biggest plate of nachos that they had to take me a good long hour and a half to eat. But I knew because of the way that we got along and because I thought she was so beautiful, obviously. And I think she shared a little bit about this in the book. She shared the same values. And I can't believe that it's almost been 20 years since we met. Time's flown by. As your political career has progressed, are those tough conversations say, hey, I want to do this now and this is going to require more time. There's more geography. You're probably going to see less of me. What's that been like? Because I feel like it's not like you're going from city council to school board, right, to city council to mayor to DC. Those are not easy transitions. Yeah, no, I mean, that was a conversation that we had about going to Washington, DC. And it's a conversation that we're having right now about the possibility of me running in 2020, which is just a completely different scale. And especially during the campaign period, basically you're gone. And so when I've talked in the last couple of months about a decision that I need to make, I mean, that's the biggest thing that weighs on me is that Garina is going to be 10 and Christian is going to be four. And so essentially you're signing up to be gone during these precious times during their life. And also, you know, Erica. Erica has always been wonderful about supporting me and my career. But that is quite a burden. So I guess we'll find out sooner or later. Yeah, eventually. He wanted me announced tonight here. His camera is already there. It's like now cast would have the scoop on everybody. Right. That would be poetic. You know, it wasn't like you termed out, right? Like you stepped down because you got this amazing opportunity. What's it like getting a phone call from Barack? And then what's it like? Like I know him, right? And then what's it like? And what goes through your mind when you tell the sitting president? No. Well, I mean, the first time I felt like I still needed to stay here and pre-K for SA had just passed. That was right, like literally less than two months after that. And so we're about two months after that. Were you worried about a window of opportunity closing because you said no? I think afterward, yeah, after. So this was what I get called in early 2013 about the possibility of joining the administration and, you know, did not. And then after that, you know, I write in the book about beginning to feel like, well, maybe I should. And also by the time I said yes to taking the HUD role in the spring of 2014, we had already implemented pre-K for SA in the fall of 2013. Yes, it was up and running. I knew that it was well executed, that it was going to, you know, it was kind of on its own. And Cheryl and the board had done a great job of implementing it. And, you know, I felt like that I could see also with I had, I would have had one more term left. You know, I felt like I had done a lot of what I wanted to do in that role or enough of what I wanted to do and that I was ready for another challenge. You know, so it was just a better time. And, you know, I don't know how many people know about this, but there was this sort of VP thing in the air, right, for a good minute. Talk about what it feels like, what it was like to be considered to be on the list, to have people sort of debate you and your qualifications and whether or not you'd be good for the job on the airway of stealth, the opportunity to sort of speak up or defend yourself. I know it's probably really hard for you to have people talk about your kids all the time. But I think people are much more familiar with the HUD piece than that particular moment. Yeah, no, I mean it was a, it's a crazy process, the vice presidential process, because it's so unlike any other part of American politics. Most politics, you're running for something, you know, you're running for mayor or running for Congress or whatever, and you're asking the voters, the people, to vote for you or not vote for you. That VP process, you're kind of pitching to one person and maybe, you know, three or four other people that advise that person on whom they should pick. And so it's just weird. Also, the ritual is that you're not supposed to even acknowledge that you're under consideration or suggest that you're interested. Even if they did ask you, it just goes counter to the idea of okay, well, it's just, you know, what's the deal here? You know, are you doing something or not doing something? And I think of politicians in two different ways. There are politicians that are very good inside players and politicians that are very good outside players. And by inside players, I mean the people that become the Speaker of the House or the Leader of the Senate or if there's a council and it's the president, you know, you have a council president. I think that VP process is suited to the inside players that can work, a small network of folks. And I have seen Joaquin and I as better at the outside with the people. And so I never felt like that was something particularly suited to, you know, what I was about. And I write at the end of the book that by the end of the process, by the time I actually sat down with Hillary, I mean, I pretty much knew that I was not going to get selected. So you were prepared for that? Yeah, I mean, it wasn't like, you know, it didn't devastate me or anything. You allow yourself to think about it for a little bit, right? I mean, you allow yourself to imagine it for a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, because if you're going to, they ask you do you want to be a part of it, the process, the vetting process. And just the vetting process was a 129 question survey and I had to get a physical and you go through about six hours of interviews with a team of lawyers that has done a whole bunch of background and opposition research on you. And they ask you questions about your personal life, your, you know, financial affairs, everything else, political stuff. And but by the end of it, yeah, I mean, I had a sense that they weren't going to go in that direction. All right. I know I have a stack of questions from the audience I need to read and I want to get to those. So I'm going to ask you two more questions. We probably could do this for another hour. Although we may almost be out of time. I don't know. Is anybody keeping time? We're good. All right. And I recognize you're not announcing today. We're all disappointed. But let me ask you two, two questions that touch on that a little bit. The first is about immigration. The current president is, is employing immigration in a political way. And I don't think that's a, I don't think that's a partisan thing to say. It'll dance a surprise to anybody. What do you wish in the folks who subscribe to his orthodoxy when it comes to this issue, what do you wish they understood about immigration that you understand that they don't seem to get? What do you wish they got? About the folks that are trying to get here, not the enemy of the country. That especially these folks that are part of the so-called caravan are people who are hungry. They're fleeing violence. They're desperate. A lot of them are women with their young children. They are refugees from a very dangerous and unfortunate situation. And I wish more folks understood on that side of the aisle that we're a strong enough and a big enough nation to deal compassionately with this group of individuals. Yeah, it's been, it's been terrible to watch this president fear monger and appeal to the smallest of instincts and divide people just to try and win an election in a few days. And we need to be bigger than that and summon our better angels as a country. So you're in the middle of a big, you're considering a big decision, right? It's a big decision. You wouldn't be thinking about it at all if you didn't believe that there was something the country needed that it doesn't have right now. What is that? What do you think this country needs? You mean in a president? Yeah, a lot. Well, I mean, yeah. But if you're asking about the country, I would say that the number one thing this country needs right now is a way to summon our common sense of national purpose. There is not a common sense of national purpose right now and the country feels very divided. And it's not like this is completely new, but we're going through leadership that is absolutely determined to exploit every single division in our country and make it worse. And so our country needs to be able to summon that common sense of purpose and identity and to chase big goals. And then we need leadership, not only a president, but people in Congress and people at every level in the public and the private sector that are trying to bring people together instead of tearing apart that have integrity and honesty that are focused on opportunity for everybody instead of picking and choosing who gets opportunity and who doesn't and that have a strong vision for the future of our country. And if I decide to run for presidents because I have a strong vision for the future of this country and I'm going to make that case to the American people. So you don't know if, but we do know why. All right. Thanks for chatting with me. I'm going to go through as many of these questions as I can. If I pull one out, it's because I feel like you already answered it. Otherwise, I'm just going to take them as they go. There's no curating over the questions. It's easy anyway. We're getting the last one. It's about working. What lessons can other cities learn from San Antonio? What do you think that we have to offer that we can export to other cities? Well, I mean, I think generally this city has been well run. There's been, you know, a focus in this city on and especially under, you know, Ron's leadership now I think more and more of a focus on equity. Right. Starting with single member districts in 77 when before that, a lot of the investments that were made were anything but equitable. And I think we've been getting better and better. There's still a lot of room for us to improve. But I think that's one of the things that we can take also just more deeply and more like less politically. The thing that I always loved about this city is that there's still this sense of community like this sense of connection between people that often goes away as cities become bigger and bigger. And I believe that, you know, whether it's the fact that we have such great participation in National Night Out or a lot of neighborhoods here you still have that sense of, you know, community spirit and you have neighborly interaction. That's something that doesn't exist to the same extent in a lot of big cities. Right. Mr. Secretary, who will be your running mate in 2020? This is from Ron. This is a really interesting one. How will you calm the fears of those Americans that oppose the browning of the country? Yeah, you know, one of the things that has given me a lot of hope these last couple of times that I've gone down to the border to McAllen and then to Torneo where the tent city is is that I saw a lot of people that don't look like me that were also there protesting, standing up for these children. And, you know, it's not the color of the skin, but it's the shared values that we have of compassion and of treating people humanely and of what has made America stand out. And people like that come in every color and throughout the country. And so it gives me great hope that just like President Obama showed that if you're an African American candidate that you could win. I think that a Latina or Latino can win. How old were you when you started thinking about seriously we started thinking seriously about elected office. What besides this is what it says besides your mom caused you to think of that of elected office in particular. Well, you know, and I write a little bit about this also in the book. It was and I've said when I was mayor that it was getting away from this place and seeing the stark differences between San Antonio in the Bay Area and that that place had a higher education levels higher income levels. It had it was more entrepreneurial in the early 90s with the internet boom and wanting to come back here and combine that with what I thought was so special about our city which was this sense of community and that people still felt connected. That's what and this chip on my shoulder that I had about the city of trying to improve it like Joaquin and I used to say when we were at Stanford oh consider San Antonio you know to our classmates about like you should consider moving to San Antonio just this pride in the city. All of that kind of mixed up and when I was growing up I mean Henry had been the mayor and he had kind of glamorized the position of being mayor of San Antonio because he did so much with it. So I saw that as a legitimate vehicle to make change in the city. So I want to make this point. I think one thing is really interesting is that even when you when you went away for school you knew then that you were going to come back. Yeah. Because I think for a lot of folks we're going to school far away Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Michigan, right? What have you. There's lots of places to go. And so you made a conscious decision from the beginning that you were going to be back here. Yeah. Yeah. Very briefly thought about going back to the Bay Area but you know pretty much knew that we were going to come back. Right. And I think this is the best question to end on. It is what is your best memory of your time at a library? Who knows who wrote that question? But it's my best. I have a worse memory. I know. Tell us that one too. No, no, my best memory I think is you know probably going on the bus with my mom she would take us to Las Palmas and take us back to the old downtown library when it was over there was it on St. Mary's? Is that right? Going, taking the bus over there and you know being amazed at the books and checking out books and bringing them home and starting to read them. Just the excitement of all of that, you know. And my worst memory, it's not that bad is sitting in some organizational meeting that they were doing like for something, some activism and it was at the library for three hours or something, you know. Like it's just so boring when I was like nine or ten years old wanting to get the hell out of there already. All right. Well look, we're glad you're back here. We're happy to have you home for as long as we do. Thank you for spending time with us and talking with us and sharing with us. Thank you guys for coming. Please go buy the book. It's a great book. Let me just say this personally. Aside from thanking you for allowing me to do this for the third time, in our city I think that we are spoiled because politics in the city is very, it's very face-to-face. If you want to, you can grab coffee with the mayor. You can hang out with the congressperson. You see the county judge running around. Being a state rep's not that big a deal. You've got state senators that you can meet with. It's not like that in other places. And so the idea that someone from here who went to school here has done all that he's done and is even considering and has seen as viable to run for the highest office in the land is tremendous. I think we take it for granted and don't understand it because we're so kind of used to you. But let me just say that from afar we should, if we don't recognize or an amazing spectacular thing it is that we're witnessing and hopefully about to witness. So thanks for spending time with us. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Thank you. Secretary Castro, State Representative Devnav, thank you so much for giving us an interesting and insightful conversation. It's just great. Mayor, thank you for joining us this evening. Rosie, thank you so much to all of you. Thank you so much for spending Friday evening here with us. I have a few announcements to make. First of all, I want to acknowledge library staff who helped organize this event this evening. Special thanks to my chief of staff, Jessica Zurita, who handled the logistics and far more than that. So if you haven't purchased your book you can purchase it outside. Secretary Castro will be signing in the gallery as soon as we end the program. And let's see my notes here. Got it all. Thank you all again for being here this evening. Thank you. Thank you.