The move makes him one of the first contenders to establish a committee in what figures to be a crowded field of Democratic challengers to President Donald Trump.
Castro, 44, has been telegraphing a presidential run for weeks, telling reporters that he was likely to do it but was going to make a final decision before the end of the year. He announced the formation of an exploratory committee, a procedural move that allows potential candidates to legally raise money, on a website and in an interview with The Associated Press.
In a video on the website, Castro said he would announce his decision on Jan. 12 in Texas and tied his potential presidential candidacy to his Mexican-American family’s humble roots on the west side of San Antonio. Castro was raised by a single mother, Rosie Castro, a San Antonio political activist in the 1970s whose other son, Joaquin, is a Texas congressman.
“My brother and I went to San Antonio’s public schools, then college, then law school,” Castro said in the video. “And just two generations after my grandmother arrived here with nothing, my brother was serving as a member of the United States Congress, and I was serving President Obama in his Cabinet. That’s America for you. This is a place where dreams can become real.”
Acknowledging the near certainty of numerous candidates, Castro said that a crowded field in 2020 would be good for the party. A host of Democratic lawmakers and former elected officials, including former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, are seen as possible candidates.
“I believe it’s going to be cathartic for the Democratic Party to have a big field of people in 2020,” Castro told The New York Times in an interview last month. “The nominees will come out stronger, and the party will come out stronger because of it.”
His prospects are complicated by the fact that of all the other potential Democratic contenders, the one with perhaps the most buzz is also a Texas Democrat — Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the El Paso congressman who tried to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz in the midterm elections but lost in one of the most closely watched races in the country.
Castro’s announcement on Wednesday came just two weeks after O’Rourke told reporters he was not ruling out running for president, a decision O’Rourke appeared to have made, in part, after meeting with Castro’s former boss, Barack Obama.
Castro and O’Rourke are friends — Castro attended O’Rourke’s election-night rally in El Paso in November. For years, Castro has been one of the few nationally recognized Democratic political stars in Texas, but his political clout and share of the spotlight have been overshadowed in some ways by O’Rourke, whose underdog Senate campaign attracted celebrity followers, tens of millions of dollars in donations and national media attention.
In an interview with The Times at O’Rourke’s election-night rally last month, Castro called O’Rourke a talented candidate. “Beto ran an inspirational campaign that brought a lot of new people into the fold,” Castro said. “They’re going to stay in the fold and vote again. Usually it’s the other way around. You get folks interested in a presidential year but then they may not participate the next time because it’s a midterm. Fortunately, it’s the other way around this time.”
On Wednesday, O’Rourke said he was happy to hear of Castro’s potential candidacy. “I’ve gotten to know him over the last few years and just think he’s a great person and will make a great candidate, and if he wins, he will make a great president,” O’Rourke told reporters in Washington.
Castro, whose memoir, “An Unlikely Journey: Waking Up from My American Dream,” was released in October, said on Wednesday in an interview with The Times that he was not worried about other Democrats who may have more starpower.
“In my whole life, I don’t think I’ve ever started out as the front-runner,” said Castro, who lost his first campaign for mayor of San Antonio back in 2005. “I grew up in a neighborhood where nobody growing up there was the front-runner at anything. So I’m not going to concern myself with who people think of as the front-runner and who they don’t.”
Castro is so far the only Hispanic contender among the crowded list of major potential Democratic challengers, a distinction he acknowledged and embraced on Wednesday.
“Of course today, because of where Latinos in the country find themselves, there’s special significance to having a Latino candidate on that stage,” Castro said. “It’s the scapegoating of the Latino community, the terrible policies at the border, the complete failure to respond to Hurricane Maria. These are tough times for the Latino community under this administration. The challenge is to give voice to that but also to represent everybody, and I intend to do both of those things.”
Castro was known for years in Texas as the bright, Harvard-educated mayor of San Antonio who helped revitalize the city and boost its national image. He rose to prominence in 2012, when he became the first Latino to give the keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. When Obama selected him to become housing secretary in 2014, Castro became the first secretary of housing and urban development whose parents lived and worked in public housing projects.
As the mayor of San Antonio, a post he held from 2009 to 2014, Castro had a poster hanging in his office at City Hall: an old sign from his mother’s unsuccessful campaign for City Council at the age of 23 in 1971. His mother, now 71, remains his inspiration.
“She wants me to go give ‘em hell,” Castro said. “She’s still an activist at heart and follows politics. But more than anything she’s proud of Joaquin and of me.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.