Greg Casar in 2022 (Photo by John Anderson)
Greg Casar continues to ascend the ladder of national prominence, today winning election to become chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus as he prepares to begin his second term representing Austin in the U.S. House of Representatives.
It’s an impressive feat for Casar who currently serves as CPC whip and who, at 35, will become the youngest leader of the caucus since it was founded in 1991. Casar will also be the first person hailing from a GOP-controlled state to chair the progressive caucus. The election win marks another step for Casar down the path of amassing more national power. (Current CPC chair, U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal is term-limited so could not run again and Casar was officially unopposed.)
But as Casar continues his national rise, he remains a kind of symbol of progressive possibility in Austin’s political scene – for better and for worse, depending on your perspective. For people on the ideological left, Casar represents the platonic ideal of what a progressive legislator should be. He resolutely stood in solidarity with left-wing groups and the people they fight for while winning policy victories that would materially improve the lives of vulnerable people – even if that improvement was, at times, fleeting.
On the right, Casar remains a boogeyman – for pretty much the same reasons he’s still revered on the left. He stood for values the right finds contemptible and he helped pass policies aimed at realizing those principles. Casar is the reason unhoused people were allowed to live in tents all across the city from 2019-2021 – at the time, a better and more comfortable way of life for some of the city’s poorest residents that made conservatives, Democrat and Republican alike, apoplectic.
He’s the guy that “defunded” the Austin Police Department in 2020, which was never really true despite messaging from Casar and his allies that oversold the effects on that year’s budget. The reality was more like a brief pause in training new officers at a training academy that whistleblowers and third-party reports agreed was badly in need of reform. But despite that reality, for Austin’s political right, the 2020 budget represents – to this day – a left-wing attack on civil order that the city has still not fully recovered from. And Casar was at the forefront of that assault.
Casar says he’s internalized important lessons from the political fights he waged as Austin’s most progressive City Council member – lessons that he intends to put into practice as CPC chair while the broader Democratic Party, still reeling from stinging defeat in November, figures how to reshape itself in a way that leads to better electoral outcomes.
“When I was first running for Congress, people told me they would rather I lose righteously than win strategically,” Casar told the Chronicle on Dec. 5. “Many of the people who said that are my friends,” Casar added. “Over the course of the last few years, I’ve learned to disagree with them on that issue. The cost of losing, on people, is too high.”
He emphasizes that this cannot mean a shift in principles. The Democratic Party must continue to stand up for people under threat from growing right wing power – LGBTQ people, the extremely poor, undocumented immigrants – while broadening the party’s appeal to “Abbott-Casar voters.” That is, people who voted for him and Texas’ increasingly extremist Republican Governor, Greg Abbott (Casar says he has encountered these kinds of voters).
“We have to fight for the working class against the powerful and the elite in a way that doesn’t throw vulnerable people under the bus,” Casar said.
Casar points to the ongoing struggle within the Democratic Party over what role defending the basic dignity and civil rights of transgender Americans should play in the party’s political identity and policy platform.
The left wing of the party is firm that the party must not surrender the issue to the right-wing propaganda machine that has made the life, safety, and dignity of LGBTQ Americans a front in the culture war. The right wing of the party has shown signs that they are ready to stop the fight to defend trans Americans following poor election results where Democrats were demonized for supporting policies that would improve the lives of trans people.
This, Casar says, is not only the morally right thing to do, but also the more electorally strategic path to pursue. Republicans will continue to obsess over their chosen cultural fear of the moment, Casar says, and they’ll label Democrats as enablers of that fear no matter what candidates say about it.
It’s also clear to Casar that right-wing grievances of the day are rarely the primary issues impacting the lives of voters. “When I knock on the doors of voters I never hear that the first issue they think about in the morning is NCAA guidelines on trans people competing in sports,” Casars said. “They think about paying rent, buying enough groceries, and healthcare.”
To successfully push back on culture war issues that motivate the Republican base but are immaterial to the lives of median voters, Casar says Democrats need to shift their messaging around these issues.
Whenever voters ask him about attacks on trans Texans initiated by Abbott, for example, Casar says his default response would be something along the lines of – “that’s awful, Abbott sucks, he’s such a bully.” Now, he tries to shift focus toward what he believes is the real goal of right-wing crusades on cultural issues – they distract the public from GOP pursuit of economic policies that empower corporations, enrich the uber wealthy, and do little to help the working class.
“I’ll say to voters, ‘I don’t know why Republicans are so obsessed with testosterone levels and what division Olympic swimmers compete in,’” Casar said, “‘But I think the reason they’re doing that is so they can give donors another tax break and keep your taxes high.’”
As CPC chair, Casar hopes he can help lead the 100-member caucus down a path where the Democratic party bends in this direction.
“The Democratic party has to start winning elections and hold a majority of the country’s center while not throwing anybody under the bus,” Casar said. “The CPC is best prepared to help the party do that because we are the caucus that has been unbought by the wealthy and willing to fight against corporations.
