San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, was in east Charlotte on Friday. He spoke to volunteers to help launch a voter registration drive for Latinos in North Carolina.
Castro received a warm welcome from President Obama campaign volunteers in an east Charlotte strip mall.
“All you guys know how important North Carolina is and that means that it takes everybody,” Castro said to volunteers. “So that’s why I wanted to come out here today to thank you for the work that y’all have been doing and the work that still needs to be done.”
An Elon University poll released last week shows Mitt Romney ahead of President Obama by four points in North Carolina.
Polls also show that Hispanics overwhelmingly support the President. So, Castro says, the more Latino voters are registered in the state, the more likely it is to turn blue again, as it did in 2008.
“His policies are much more beneficial to the Hispanic community on immigration reform, education, on healthcare, on tax policy, so it’s not a surprise that Hispanics have rallied around President Obama,” Castro says.
Castro, of course, is a rising star in the Democratic party and there’s speculation that he’ll run for president in four years. He was diplomatic in addressing his future.
“I’m going to be in San Antonio through 2017 if the voters will have me, that’s my tenure, we have an 8-year limit, so I’ll be there for a while,” Castro says.
He joked that his three-year-old daughter, Carina Victoria, was the real star during his keynote address, when cameras caught her dramatically flipping her hair.
Full speech and Q&A session
http://youtu.be/bqpagUl16ao
Q&A session
http://youtu.be/q09_1Kg2NNg