San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro is frequently mentioned as a possible Democratic candidate for governor or other statewide elected office, but a new poll shows that Texas voters still aren’t ready to vote for Castro.
Public Policy Polling took a look at what Texans are thinking about the state’s leaders. The poll discovered that despite the glowing national attention that Mayor Castro has received since delivering the keynote at the Democratic National Convention – he’s still lagging behind in state name recognition.
"Only 53 percent of voters are familiar with him, so he would still have a fair amount of work to do in a statewide campaign of introducing himself to voters in the state," said Tom Jensen with Public Policy Polling.
The poll also looked at how well Castro would do in theoretical match ups for governor.
"In these head to head match-ups he trails Greg Abbot by 10 points and trails Rick Perry by 5 points, so definitely I think he does have a lot of statewide potential. 2014 might be a little too early for him to be able to take that leap," Jensen said.
If Castro does decide to run for a state office he has time to build his name identification across Texas. He will be formally announcing his re-election for San Antonio mayor tomorrow and so far no serious challenger has come forward that could deny him another two years leading city hall.
