Garry Mauro must be having the time of his life.
Hillary Clinton doesn't have anyone anywhere in the country -- including the old and new faces inside her national message machine -- more loyal or eager to help her win the presidency than Mauro, the four-term Texas Land Commissioner (1982-1999) and 1998 gubernatorial nominee.
I could barely hear Mauro on Saturday for chants of "Hill-a-ry, Hill-a-ry" when I tracked him down by cell phone at a Clinton rally in El Paso. He was leaving an event at one voting site, where he estimated the crowd at 2,000, and heading for another one across town. Both were designed to draw Hispanics directly to polling places where they could cast ballots under Texas' progressive early-voting law.
"We know what we're doing." Mauro said. "We know what we are up against. We have a plan in place, and if we execute, we'll kick some ass."
One thing is certain: Something unheard of -- something absolutely off-the-charts -- is happening in Texas.
It's been two decades -- a virtual generation -- since a Democratic presidential primary in Texas meant anything this significant. This year, it's arguably Ground Zero for both campaigns, and there's a sense among Lone Star voters that everyone recognizes what's at stake.
The contest that began on Jan. 3 in Iowa with eight candidates has run through 22 debates and 37 primaries or caucuses to split 2,595 delegates, so far. After all that, it's come down to who wins Texas on March 4.
"There is no question; the tectonic plates are moving here," Jay Root, capital bureau chief of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, told me on Saturday.
If early voting trends hold, the turnout record set on Super Tuesday 1988 when the Dukakis-Jackson-Gore showdown drew almost 1.8 million Texas Democrats to the polls won't just be broken; it will be shattered, said Ed Martin, a former Democratic Party official and uber-expert on how Texas Democrats vote.
The big story, Martin said, is that in the large metropolitan areas (Ft. Worth-Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin and El Paso) nearly half the early ballots are coming from Texans with no recent history of voting Democrat. "It's a whole new raft of voters, and it isn't slowing down."
Martin said the surge is showing-up disproportionately in the urban and suburban areas of the state, and African-American turnout is spiking so high that in some places it could be 25 percent of the primary vote.
The Obama campaign is drawing a lot of attention for rallies in those same areas, where crowd estimates regularly top 10,000. But that doesn't worry Mauro, who was organizing Hispanics in South Texas 30 years ago before he put his own name on a statewide ballot.
Mauro's strategy is based on running two distinctly separate, simultaneous campaigns: one for the primary and one the caucuses that follow after the polls close. "I don't even let the two talk to each other," he said.
The primary campaign has built voter identification and get-out-the-vote events around former President Clinton in 21 of the state's 23 media markets and taken Hillary Clinton to at least 14 of those same markets.
"We could have a rally with 20,000, but instead we are focusing on smaller targeted events that draw several thousand voters to early voting sites, so they can vote" he said. "His rallies are at night at the Capitol. He's showboating for the media."
Gardner Selby, the veteran political columnist for the Austin American-Statesman, said he is baffled by some of the commentary about the Texas campaign he's seen from "East Coast media" on cable television and the Internet.
"The presidential race is not over. Anybody who says they know what is going to happen here is drunk on their own (ego)," Selby said.
After talking to a half-dozen of the top political reporters in Texas and almost as many key Democratic operatives, a couple of things are clear.
First, the candidate who wins the popular vote wins the state. Forget the Byzantine caucus system that takes place in 8,000 precincts that night. The popular vote will provide the frame for early wire stories, candidate remarks on the 10 p.m. newscasts and headlines in the morning papers. That is what matters.
Second, despite speculation by some reporters outside Texas, at least for now, there is no racial hostility building between Latinos and blacks. Party leaders are aware of that perception, two journalists said, but Mauro immediately and forcefully quashed the suggestion that anything like that is happening.
"All of that is bullshit," said Mauro. "Hispanics in this state are not racist." He noted that Ron Kirk, the African-American former-mayor of Dallas carried El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley in his 2002 Senate primary against a well-known Hispanic.
Finally, there are two numbers to watch.
* The key number for the black vote seems to be 25 percent. If turnout among African-Americans hits 25 percent in the metropolitan areas Obama likely wins.
* The key number for the Hispanic vote seems to be 2/3. If Clinton busts 66 percent among Latinos, she likely wins. If not, again, Obama carries the state.
If Obama wins Texas on March 4, frankly, he's the nominee. Bill Clinton himself has said as much.
But if Clinton wins, the entire dynamic of the race will shift. She'll be able to claim she is best suited to be the nominee because she consistently wins the big states: New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Texas, Ohio, Florida and Michigan. He'll go from front-runner to the candidate who only wins small states; but more problematic, he'll be the candidate who has failed to show any significant support among Hispanics.
(Remember, that in addition to California, Clinton carried Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. Obama barely got 50 percent from Hispanics in his home state, Illinois.)
Mauro said the reality is that Obama has more on the line in Texas than the national media is reporting and an Obama loss in Texas effectively seals the deal for Clinton.
"It's the last state with a big constituency of Hispanic voters," said Mauro, noting that John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has Southwestern roots and positions on trade and immigration that could help Republicans make inroads with Latinos unless Democrats nominate someone with a proven record of Hispanic support.
Mauro said Obama's Texas strategy is similar to the one he had in California, which was based largely on attempts to change the minds of people who had already decided how they would vote.
"The problem is this guy just doesn't know how to talk to Hispanics..." Mauro said. "McCain could kick his ass (with them)."
Obama seems to understand that position to some degree. Word is James Aldrete, the brightest Hispanic media consultant in Texas, has come aboard to help Obama with Texas Latinos.
Obama's best chance to pull more than 1/3 of the Hispanic vote, seems to be a strategy designed to target younger voters and draw them away from the politics of their parents, many of whom feel a strong affinity for the Clintons, Mauro and Cisneros grounded in decades of pachangas and longtime personal friendships.
Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News, the dean of Texas political writers, is roving the state reporting on subjective aspects of both campaigns, and Christy Hoppe, capital bureau chief of the Morning News, is traveling with Clinton inside Texas.
Going into the final full week before the March 4 vote, both said that Clinton's vaunted support among Hispanics, especially in the crucial region of South Texas, is holding strong.
"As you know, in politics, a lot can change in 10 days," Slater said.
Anyway, when was the last time a Dem has won Texas? Was it 1968? How realistic is it to assume that this extremely conservative state is going to change colors over night?
I don't believe Obama's nomination is in trouble if HRC wins Texas. She has to blow him out the rest of the way to get within striking distance. Of course, in the meantime, if encouraged enough by the outcome, she will surely use a scorched earth campaign which will hurt the party and down-ticket candidates... not that that should give her any pause for concern because her "history" is what matters.
Here's something you wrote:
"But if Clinton wins, the entire dynamic of the race will shift. She'll be able to claim she is best suited to be the nominee because she consistently wins the big states: New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Texas, Ohio, Florida and Michigan. He'll go from front-runner to the candidate who only wins small states;..."
Sure, you haven't overtly claimed to agree with what "she'll be able to claim," but you lend credence to it by stating it. The ENTIRE DYNAMIC shifts?!? There's no need for you to add that unless you're suggesting that she'll be able to really get traction with that claim - or that it has some merit. The only way the dynamic shifts is if you put some credence in the concept that the Texas primary means something more than other state primaries (it doesn't).
Fact is, unless it's a 75-25 blowout, she doesn't swing the delegate count very much at all. Further, if she wins 51-49, does the ENTIRE DYNAMIC still shift? Of course not - unless you believe that your comment about what her "claim" to be the only one able to win in 'big states' is true.
So am I splitting some hairs in my interpretation? Maybe... a little... but I contend that you could have expressed this idea in a way that doesn't beg for dissection.