Greg Casar


Gregorio Eduardo Casar is an American politician serving as a U.S. representative from since 2023. He served as a member of the Austin City Council from the 4th district from 2015 to 2022. Casar is a member of the Democratic Party and was endorsed by the Working Families Party in his run for Congress. He was first elected to the Austin City Council in 2014, representing District 4. He was reelected in 2016 and 2020. He was elected to Congress in 2022.
Casar is the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He is a member of the Squad, which includes six other members who form the furthest-left wing faction of the House Democratic Caucus.
On August 25, 2025, Casar announced he would seek reelection in the newly-drawn 37th district, instead of his current 35th district, as a result of impending new congressional maps.

Early life and education

Gregorio Eduardo Casar was born on May 4, 1989, in Houston, to two Mexican immigrants and is a Catholic. His father was a surgeon. He grew up in the enclave of Bellaire and attended Strake Jesuit College Preparatory, where he ran track. Casar then earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and social thought from the University of Virginia in 2011. He began his activism in college, organizing with Students and Workers United for a Living Wage, which called for the university to pay its workers a living wage.

Early career

Workers Defense Project

Before running for office, Casar worked as policy director for the Workers Defense Project, where he won victories such as rest and water breaks for construction workers, living wage requirements, and against wage theft.
In 2011, he led the Workers Defense Project efforts to require that construction workers be allowed to take rest and water breaks: ten minutes for each four hours worked, and no more than 3.5 hours without a break. Casar also organized against major corporations, including White Lodging, and successfully led the fight to include living wage and other labor protections in an incentives deal the Austin City Council planned to give to Apple.

Austin City Council

Elections

2014

In 2014, Austin had its first election with geographic, single-member districts to elect City Council members, instead of an at-large election. Casar finished first in the election, but went into a runoff against Laura Pressley, an anti-fluoride activist. Casar won the runoff, but Pressley sued to contest the results, claiming ballot irregularities. In 2019, the Supreme Court of Texas rejected her final appeal.

2016

In 2016, Casar was reelected to Austin City Council in the same election in which Donald Trump was elected president. When asked by the Austin-American Statesman whether he would shake hands with President Trump, he responded "Hell no." The day after Election Day, Casar wrote, "Lots of people, including Donald Trump, are calling for healing and unity today. I won't call for healing. I'm calling for resistance."

2020

In 2020, Casar was elected for a third time to the Austin City Council. In November 2020, Austin Monthly published "Why Gregorio Casar is the Future of Texas Politics." Casar considered running for the Texas Senate seat held by retiring Kirk Watson, but ultimately did not enter the race.

Tenure

As an Austin City Council member, Casar led policy efforts on issues ranging from affordable housing, paid sick leave, living wage increases, tenant organizing, immigrant rights, criminal justice reforms, and police accountability. He was the first person to represent Austin's District 4, the city's most diverse district. It has the most young children, and is 70% nonwhite. Most of its constituents are Latino, and it has the second largest African American population of Austin's ten council districts. It also has the highest poverty rate. By Casar's estimation, 30 percent of his District 4 constituents were undocumented immigrants.
Casar served as the board chair of Local Progress, a project of the Center for Popular Democracy, "the national network of progressive elected officials from cities, counties, towns, school districts, villages and other local governments across the country."
Casar announced his resignation on November 4, 2021, effective February 4, 2022, when he announced his run for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 35th district.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

2022

On November 4, 2021, Casar announced his candidacy for Texas's 35th congressional district. During the primary, he was endorsed by prominent national progressives, including senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as Austin officials such as Mayor Steve Adler and Travis County district attorney José Garza. Casar joined the Squad, which includes Ocasio-Cortez and five other members who form the furthest-left wing faction of the House Democratic Caucus.
Casar won the Democratic primary on March 1, 2022, with approximately 60% of the vote. In his victory speech, he linked his victory to the overall progressive movement, saying, "This election was about us, the power of the people and the power of our movement. Let's celebrate the progressive movement in Texas". Given the 35th district's partisan lean of D+21, Casar's primary victory was considered tantamount to election. The ''Texas Tribune'' wrote that he is expected to be "among the most progressive members of Congress ever to serve from Texas".
On November 8, 2022, Casar won the general election, defeating the Republican nominee, former Corpus Christi mayor Dan McQueen, with 73% of the vote.

Tenure

Casar was among the 46 Democrats who voted against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the House. On July 25, 2023, Casar led a thirst strike advocating for better heat protection after a law passed in Texas overrode local ordinances such as water and rest breaks. The strike lasted for nine hours and Casar took no breaks nor did he eat or drink.

Caucus memberships

;Current
  • Committee on Education and Workforce
  • *Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions
  • *Subcommittee on Workforce Protections
  • Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
  • *Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs
  • *Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency
;Past
  • Committee on Agriculture
  • *Subcommittee on Commodity Exchanges, Energy, and Credit
  • *Subcommittee on Nutrition and Foreign Agriculture

    Political positions

Criminal justice reform

Ban the box

In 2016, Casar led efforts at City Hall to "ban the box" through a fair chance hiring ordinance. The ordinance delays when employers can do a criminal background check until after a conditional job offer has been made, in order to help reintegrate former prisoners into the workplace and deter employment discrimination. Austin became the first city to ban the box in the Southern United States.

Freedom City

Because of Texas Senate Bill 4's limitations on sanctuary cities, and in an effort to reduce the impact of low-level interactions with police, Casar initiated policy changes to make Austin a "Freedom City", which discourages the police from making low-level discretionary arrests and requires police officers to inform residents that they have the right to refuse to answer questions about immigration status. During the debate, the Austin Police Association attacked Casar for citing data that Black residents are arrested twice as often as white residents in discretionary arrests. Casar wrote in a Texas Tribune editorial that the Freedom Cities law's intention is to unite immigration reformers and criminal justice reformers to reduce the disparate impact of policing on communities of color. In the first quarter after the policy passed, arrests for ticket-worthy offenses dropped by two-thirds. Racial disproportionality of arrests also improved.

Juvenile curfew

In June 2017, Casar and Delia Garza pushed the council to eliminate criminal penalties for a juvenile to "walk, run, idle, wander, stroll, or aimlessly drive" during curfew hours, out of a belief that kids should not be pushed into the criminal justice system for being young and out in public. Many of these laws, including Austin's, were passed during Clinton Administration's "tough on crime" phase in the 1990s. Ultimately, the council removed the juvenile curfew. Austin became the nation's second-largest city to end its juvenile curfew policy.

Police reform

When the Austin police union contract was set to expire in early 2017, criminal justice activists called for reform, citing examples in the contract that made police oversight difficult. Casar, Jimmy Flannigan, and other Council members indicated their intent to reject the contract and send the union back to the bargaining table unless it was reformed. After the contract was rejected, the police union requested bonus pay without a contract in place, but that was opposed by a divided council. After nearly ten months of negotiations, a new contract was approved, along with the creation of an independent office of police oversight. The new contract made it easier to file complaints, provided more transparency around complaints of police misconduct, strengthened police disciplinary procedures, and increased accountability.
In 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter protests reached Austin. During the protests, Austin police were involved in use of force incidents where civilians were injured. Casar called for more oversight. Working with community leaders, he crafted a three-tiered plan to reduce the police department budget. Austin became one of the only cities in the nation to successfully begin reallocating significant funding from its police department to other city programs.
The council voted unanimously to eliminate upcoming cadet classes in the police academy, diverting $20 million to programs that address homelessness, mental health, and family violence prevention. During the year after the budget vote, another $80 million will be reallocated from the department by placing some functions, such as forensics and 911 dispatch, within other parts of the city's government. The council also flagged another $50 million for "community-led" review.