U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, who is running to represent the district that includes UT and West Campus, spoke Thursday about the future of the Democratic Party and the midterm election at an event hosted by The Patman Center at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.
Casar currently represents Texas’ 35th District, which included parts of San Antonio and East Austin until Texas’s 2025 redistricting session. Now, Casar is the Democratic nominee for District 37 under the new map, which includes UT and West Campus, as well as a significant portion of Austin.
Casar chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which advocates for progressive policies in the U.S. Congress. During the talk, he said he believes the Democratic Party will become more progressive on economic and foreign policy issues in 2027. He also said that if the Democratic Party gains a majority in Congress in this year’s midterm election, it should go beyond investigating corruption within the Republican Party and instead investigate major donors and create further contribution limits.
“What I’m hearing from people that aren’t solidly always voting Democratic is that they want to see the Democratic Party shift, and they think that both parties are equally corrupt and hypocritical,” Casar said. “We have to show that we’re willing to go after corporations that are trying to corrupt our government and screw people over, whether they sometimes contribute to Democrats or Republicans.”
Casar said that even if Democrats change Texas by electing Democratic nominees James Talarico to the U.S. Senate and Gina Hinojosa for governor, Texas would still be the “epicenter” of politics and face competition from Republicans. Casar is running against Republican Lauren Peña, a constitutional conservative, human trafficking survivor and mother of six, according to her campaign website.
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, a co-founder of Workers Defense Project, an immigrant and worker justice organization, hosted Casar’s talk. Casar worked for Ramirez at Workers Defense Project, where he said he got his first job as an organizer before he became an Austin City Council member in 2015. Casar said he loved his time on the city council and felt more connected to the people he represented.
“As a city council member, I felt so connected to my constituents,” Casar said. “If politicians drawing these gerrymandered lines (weren’t) dictating the outcome so much, you could see your member of Congress more regularly.”
Casar said that despite the “suffering” happening in the United States right now, change is possible, pointing to historical grassroots moments where people worked from the bottom up to create lasting change and progress in legislation.
“The people in the Civil Rights Movement, or in the Civil War or (who) founded this country were not made out of gold,” Casar said. “They were figuring it out just like us … and so that responsibility gets passed along to us, there’s nothing particularly special or impossible about it.”
