The American dream is not a sprint, or even a marathon, but a relay. Our families don't always cross the finish line in the span of one generation. But each generation passes on to the next the fruits of their labor. My grandmother never owned a house. She cleaned other people's houses so she could afford to rent her own. But she saw her daughter become the first in her family to graduate from college. And my mother fought hard for civil rights so that instead of a mop, I could hold this microphone.

We've seen tremendous progress in many ways under President [Barack] Obama. I mean, if we think about where the economy was when he got in - you know, we were losing more than 700,000 jobs a month. The unemployment rate was skyrocketing. And now it's at under 5 percent, so there is a lot of progress that has happened.

My hope is Donald Trump will focus on building bridges instead of walls.

I cannot imagine a scenario where Donald Trump does better than Mitt Romney with the Hispanic vote.

What I hear from people out there is they always say that [Donald Trump] doesn't like us. And so they're energized.

My grandmother didn't live to see us begin our lives in public service. But she probably would have thought it extraordinary that just two generations after she arrived in San Antonio, one grandson would be the mayor and the other would be on his way - the good people of San Antonio willing- to the United States Congress.

A couple of years ago, my wife, Erica, and I were getting our daughter ready for school and an image of President [Barack] Obama was on one of the morning shows. And I said, oh, look, Carina, there's the president. You can be president one day. And she said, right away, that's for boys. And so right away I said, oh, no, you can be a doctor. You can be a lawyer. You can be anything you want. You can be president.