Texas Twofer: Julián and Joaquín Castro

Julián Castro

Older by one minute. First to run for office, winning a San Antonio city-council seat in 2001, with the activist Castro matriarch, Rosie, as his campaign manager.
Accepted to Yale Law, but because Joaquín didn’t get in, both brothers—Stanford grads—decided on Harvard.
Julián “has always been the more quiet, more serious,” Rosie told Vogue last year. “Joaquín likes meeting people and trying something new.”
Third-term mayor of San Antonio, HIs foreign-sounding name and stirring keynote at the 2012 Democratic National Convention have invited comparisons as “the Hispanic Obama.”

Joaquín Castro

Elected to the Texas legislature in 2002; after ten years, won a US House seat.
Education is key for both. Joaquín focuses on getting poor students through college, Julián on funding full-day pre-K in San Antonio.
Since Joaquín’s 2013 marriage to Anna Flores, who works for a San Antonio tech firm, Julián’s wedding ring [he’s married to Erica, a schoolteacher] is no longer the giveaway.
Says Joaquín: “When I was in San Antonio, probably ten times a day they called me mayor, so I’m hoping he gets some of that in Washington.”

This article appears in the July 2014 issue of Washingtonian.

Rebecca Nelson

With the arrival of Julián Castro to head up HUD, he and his twin, Joaquín, a congressman, will be in the capital at the same time. Here's how to tell them apart.