Riding the fame from his inspiring Democratic National Convention keynote speech this week, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro has been making the press rounds and working to rally Latinos behind Obama.
Though Mitt Romney trails 30 to 40 percentage points to Obama's 64 percent of Latino support -- according to this week's impreMedia-Latino Decisions tracking poll -- Castro believes Obama will take the election with at least 70 percent of the Latino vote.
"I believe that, at the end of the day, that the president’s percentage of the Latino vote is going to be closer to Clinton’s 1996 percentage, which was 73 percent, and I say that for a couple of reasons, most importantly because of policy." Castro told Bloomberg News Thursday.
He continued, explaining Latinos are much more likely to prefer Obama's immigration reform, financial aid investments for college and affordable health care to Romney's right-wing extremist views on the issues that are most important to the Hispanic community.
"Mitt Romney is the most conservative candidate that the Latino community has seen," Castro told Bloomberg.
"The challenge that Mitt Romney has is not the personalities," he said, noting the "big deal" the media has made over the prominent stage presence of Latino politicians during both conventions. "It’s the policies."
While Obama has a strong lead among Latino voters, Romney made up four percentage points in the wake of last week's Republican National Convention, which was said to have a "minimal impact" on his chances. Still he has a long way to go to close the 64-30 gap as he needs an estimated 40 percent of the Latino vote to overcome his Democratic competitor.
Obama dropped one point in Latino support from the previous week, but is likely to bounce back next week as the DNC wraps up.
As for his own political inspirations, it seems Castro will stay in Texas -- for now, anyway. When asked about the recent Twitter hashtag that references Castro's potential run for president in the next election (#JulianCastro2016), he stuck by his hometown, dousing any hopes for a relocation to Washington.
"I'm flattered, but that's never going to happen. I'm the mayor of a city," Castro explained to Fox News Latino. "I want to be in San Antonio to make it an even greater city for the next few years, if the voters will have me."
Check out his full interview with Fox News Latino in the video above.
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