(Cross-posted from The Field.)
As with at Wednesday’s Obama event in San Marcos, The Field showed up punctually at tonight’s Clinton Event at Hemisfair Plaza in San Antonio, at five o’clock, to place an advance eyeball on the scene.
After all, these two events tonight - Obama was in nearby Selma - serve as the definitive fire drill for Tuesday night’s caucuses in 622 precincts throughout Bexar County and its hub city of San Antonio: which candidate can turn out the troops?
And San Antonio is The Front: the border between Obama country – the Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin regions – and Clinton country – the Rio Grande Valley region. As Bexar County goes, so may well go Texas...
In downtown San Antonio, a few hundred people were on line to enter a penned-in area for the Clinton event, entering through three police checkpoints to go through metal detectors. On the other side of the press entrance was a riser with camera crews from the local ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and Telemundo affiliates all setting up. I asked the local Fox correspondent where to find the Clinton press staff to get credentials. “I dunno,” her response. Another local newsman said, “I haven’t seen anybody yet.” This was the first clue of the haphazard disorganization and no-show-ism that would characterize tonight’s Clinton rally.
About half of the people on line were aging white folks and the other half Hispanics of all ages, both skewing about 60 percent women. Some of the Caucasian ladies were wearing white tee-shirts that proclaimed: “Girls Night Out ’08: Hillary’s Texan Raucous Caucus.” Another woman had a “Ready on Day Won” poster and another wore a “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights: Hillary” tee.
Unable to find the press staff, hungry, and clearly too early for the story, your correspondent ducked out and strolled along the nearby San Antonio Riverwalk, a parallel reality with little put-put tourist boats going by where nobody seemed aware that a presidential candidate was about to stop nearby (and nor was anyone there campaigning to rope them in). I slipped into Schilo’s Deli on Commercial Street, and chomped down a delicious bagel-and-lox with Schilo’s hot mustard (“Made with San Antonio pride,” it said on the label), and jotted down a few notes to chronicle the empty non-spectacle I had just witnessed at Hemisfair Plaza. That didn’t take long. I made my way back to the rally at 7:02 p.m. (the Clinton campaign had set 7 p.m. as the start-time for the event). There were several hundred now inside the pen and several hundred on line to get in.
Various camera crews were on the press line but couldn’t get in for reasons unexplained. They did not seem like happy campers. A cop said, “Are there any reporters that don’t have equipment to bring in?” Oh, my lucky stars! I jumped to the front of the line. He scanned with a handheld metal detector, and waved me through. The press area was tiny and claustrophobic, filled with people that clearly didn't want to be there, so I asked the warden, er, a Clinton guy, to let me out and into to the public area. “You’ll have to wait for the staff to get back here.” I gave him that pissed-off look for which I’m told I'm infamous, and he sighed, “okay, okay, go on through.”
The first task was to measure the fenced-in area to estimate how many people could fit in the corral. That was easy, because there weren’t enough people there to block me from walking in a straight line each way and count paces. And there I was, pacing the entire length of the arena, while Secret Service guys looked on nervously. Taking easy steps that were about two feet long, I measured 76 feet from the stage to the back, and almost 300 feet from side to side: 22,800 square feet, or 2,500 square yards. You could pack 15,000 into such a space like sardines, and about 5,000 would fit comfortably. But three quarters of this space was still vacant, with maybe 1,500 people swarmed around the stage and 150 more in seats on risers in the rear.
“Hey man, who do you write for?” some enterprising youths with tee shirts that proclaimed “Proud Bronx Democrats” converged upon me as I was scribbling on my pad. (Oh no, I thought: a paternity suit?) They said they had traveled here from New York with State Assemblyman Jose Rivera, chairman of the Bronx County Democrats. Good kids, they turned out to be. Their names are Uli and Tone. (New Jersey US Sen. Bob Menendez and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa were also among the out-of-town surrogates here, working the Hispanic community for Clinton). Uli and Tone introduced me to their colleague Angel Cruz, and I mentioned that I was from 199th Street and the Grand Concourse. “Bedford Park!” he exclaimed, but then I was trapped. I was barrio, now, and he insisted that we all pose for photos together. And there I was, saying “cheese” with the Bronx Clinton team in San Antonio, Texas. Angel promises to send the photos along to The Field.
With the exception of those guys – excited to be on a road trip (and out of the frozen Bronx, no doubt) – the rest of the crowd seemed fairly joyless. Everybody seems to know already how this is going to end up. This is the last hurrah.
One lone woman had a handmade sign that had the word “Obama” crossed out with the universal ban symbol – a red circle with a line through it – and the phrase, “Say no to hypocrisy.” And yet, even among fellow travelers, she was all alone in the crowd. As was the lady that wore a shirt that said, “Bring A Clinton Back.”
Some did travel in packs: A few members of the Machinists union arrived in blue “I Am Counting On Hillary” tee shirts with their union logo. A dozen AFSCME folks were there in their green “AFSCME for Hillary” tees. A half dozen members of the American Federation of Teachers were present, sporting blue AFT-Hillary shirts. And a lone man in a suit emblazoned with United Farm Workers buttons, carrying a UFW flag, was milling around.
At 7:47 a band took the stage. Now, I knew it was the guys from the Houston-based La Mafia and a good number of the Hispanic youths in the audience did, too, but nobody had introduced them to the assembled and many of the vowel-impaired among them scratched their heads. These guys are music industry giants. They have filled the Astrodome. Tonight they couldn’t draw 2,000 people. That’s gotta be a buzzkill. As the band played I went to check the three entrances again.
By 7:50 p.m. the northern entrance, from downtown, already had no line waiting to get in. The western entrance, had 24 people on line. And the southern entrance, still had 150 to 180, mostly Hispanic folks from the South Side, still getting processed through the metal detectors.
Oscar de La Rosa, the lead singer for La Mafia, generated applause and cheers shouting “Tejanos for Hillary! Latinos for Hillary! Texas for Hillary! Let me see all your signs!” The flurry of enthusiasm lasted for about 30 seconds, and then trickled out.
I asked Uli and Tone for their estimate of the crowd size. They shrugged their shoulders and asked for mine. “1,500.”
“Oh, that’s bad,” Uli exclaimed, but made no counter-estimate.
“I don’t see any black people here,” Angel noted.
“Glad you guys could make it,” I said. “It doesn’t seem like there will be too many more of these.”
But, hey, it got us all out of the Bronx!
* * *
KSAT Channel 13 estimated 8,000 at the Obama rally in nearby Selma. So did KENS Channel 5. Selma, Texas has a population, according to the US Census, of 788 people. And Obama drew 8,000 there – ten times, or a thousand percent, of the local population - many of them, of course, drove from nearby San Antonio.
San Antonio has a population of 1.3 million people. Clinton drew 1,500 – maybe 1,800, or 0.13 percent (thanks for the math correction, kind reader!) of the population – here tonight.
I still don’t know about the Texas primary and its 126 pledged district delegates and how to call it. More investigation and numbers-crunching is on the docket for this weekend.
But regarding those 67 pledged district delegates to be chosen by caucus later on Tuesday night: It’s pretty clear which campaign is going to be pulling them to the caucuses in droves. After all, Clinton’s event tonight was called for 7 p.m. – the same hour as the caucuses next Tuesday night – but not even with a stadium-sized musical group could she bring many of the locals out tonight.
There were two stories out of Greater San Antonio tonight. I chose the path less traveled…
There are 8,000 precincts in Texas, each one with a caucus, and there will be 8,000 stories on Tuesday night, 622 of them here in Bexar County. No wonder her people want to sue to stop those caucuses from happening.
The caucuses are going to go down in history as the Texas stampede that will likely ensure that no matter how the primary goes, Obama will come out of Texas as the Lone Star in the Democratic presidential contest… with the most Texan Democratic National Convention delegates.