Julián Castro, who announced his campaign for president in San Antonio on Saturday, voted in 2002 to give $600,000 in taxpayer subsidies to Donald Trump’s Miss USA beauty pageant. | Alex Wong/Getty Images 2020 Elections The time Julián Castro did business with Trump — and quickly regretted it The former San Antonio councilman voted for hundreds of thousands in subsidies to land a beauty pageant.

On Saturday, Julián Castro announced he wants Donald Trump’s job. Back in 2002, he wanted Trump’s business.

As a San Antonio City Council member in his late 20s, Castro voted to give $600,000 in taxpayer subsidies to land Trump’s Miss USA beauty pageant — a move that delighted the business mogul at the time and would undoubtedly do so again if Castro gains traction in the Democratic presidential primary.


“I had many people who wanted [the pageant], and San Antonio did a great job taking it away from other cities," Trump told the San Antonio Express-News at the time, adding later: “I usually end up investing wherever I go. You got to do something with the money, right?”

Then-Mayor Ed Garza, who met with Trump and worked hard to land the event, argued it was a “sound investment for the media exposure.”

But Castro would soon wonder if he made a mistake in voting to fork over serious taxpayer cash for the event, which was approved in a unanimous vote.

"The deal for the Miss USA Pageant was based on the assertions of the staff that we would get about $2 million in direct advertising," Castro told the Express-News in March 2003, weeks before the pageant began. "But there was no analysis in respect to how many room nights we would get out of it, how many visitors would come into the city, how much they would spend.”

Castro, who announced his campaign for president in San Antonio on Saturday, suggested in a statement that Trump pulled one over his hometown.

"Donald Trump routinely overpromises and underdelivers, and taxpayers are always left with the bill," Castro‘s spokeswoman, Jennifer Fiore, said.

The saga from the archives of San Antonio government is unlikely to determine the next resident of the Oval Office. But the Republican National Committee, which dug up the vote in 2016 as part of opposition research on Castro when the former Housing and Urban Development secretary was in the running to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate, saw it at least as a potential opportunity to embarrass the Democratic ticket.

Trump repeatedly mocked his 2016 rivals over their past financial dealings with him, accusing them of “begging” for his money when it served their interests. With Clinton, he argued that his past campaign contributions essentially forced her to come to his wedding. “She didn’t have a choice, because I gave,” he said.

“When it suited their own political interests, Democrats like Julián Castro were happy to do business with President Trump,” RNC spokesman Michael Ahrens said. “It totally undercuts their attacks on him now. In other words, they were totally for him before they were totally against him.”

The agreement between the city and the Miss Universe Organization is full of small details that Trump would surely enjoy lording over his would-be challenger. Miss Universe Organization is the parent company of the Miss USA pageant.

In addition to hundreds of free or discounted hotel rooms, dozens of cars, two “first class, climate-controlled buses,” and 24-hour security, the city helped provide The Trump Organization with “muffins and bagels (with assorted condiments), granola bars, candy, fresh fruit, chips, pretzels, cookies/crackers, popcorn, nut mix, raisins," according to a copy of the agreement obtained by an open records request.

“Because of the delegates’ strenuous schedule, it is extremely important the snacks be nutritionally balanced and that plenty of non-carbonated bottled water, pure juice, soda, coffee, tea, and milk are available,” the agreement said.

At the time, some local media criticized the deal as a waste of taxpayer money. “No need — great, small, or teeth-gritting — has been forgotten or ignored by Trump's City Hall admirers,” as then-San Antonio Express-News columnist Roddy Stinson put it. "Most San Antonians will go to their graves without a week, a day or even an hour of the kind of cosseting that Mayor Ed Garza and his City Council colleagues have agreed to provide for pageant contestants (or “delegates”), their handlers and assorted hotshots."

Despite that type of criticism, city officials around the country regularly cut high-profile deals for big-name events.

“Reading the details can sound silly. Sometimes they sound like a waste of taxpayer dollars, but ultimately they are long-term efforts to try to attract publicity and standing for the city,” said John Hudak, deputy director for the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution. “There are a lot of times when the direct income from deals like this tend to fall short, but some things can raise the profile of a city or can help a city get free advertising.”

New York state and city politicians recently suffered blowback for a different type of deal between government and the private sector: Providing Amazon with billions in incentives to attract a new headquarters and the thousands of jobs promised with it.

Among the politicians to publicly oppose the agreements was Castro. "Throwing billions at big corporations shouldn’t become the new norm in local economic development," he tweeted.

“There are so many more effective ways that New York and northern Virginia could build prosperity," Castro added, "than by throwing billions of dollars at Amazon.”