An article posted this evening on SF Gate (the San Francisco Chronicle's website) reports that the California campaign manager responsible for Clinton's victory in the Golden State's Super Tuesday primary, Averell "Ace" Smith, has been recruited to provide a repeat performance in Texas:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, signaling the start of an aggressive drive in states she must win on March 4, has summoned the formidable political "closer" who led her 9-point Super Tuesday victory in California to run her Texas effort, sources said today.
This is yet another reminder that Hillary Clinton and her campaign are not to be underestimated, and the race is far from over.
The Clinton camp will be pulling out all stops to win Texas (and Ohio), and Smith's experience with California's Latino community (he was responsible for L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's successful campaign against a better funded opponent) is worth paying attention to. The California Majority Report describes that campaign thusly:
Most recently, Smith served as campaign manager for Antonio Villaraigosa's underdog campaign for Mayor of Los Angeles. Despite being outspent by over $1 million in the primary campaign, Villaraigosa beat Hahn by 11%. He went on to a 19% general election victory over the incumbent mayor, marking the first time since the 1930's that an incumbent has been beat after only a single term. It also marked the first time in 133 years that a Latino has been elected Mayor of Los Angeles.
As today's Chronicle article states:
Smith has shown an uncanny knack for identifying key demographic groups and delivering voters in his races in the nation's most populous state. In Texas, he will take on the challenge for Clinton in a state with key demographic parallels to California — a wide swath of critical Latino voters and working women.
A key part of Smith's strategy in California was stockpiling early votes:
Critical in that win, insiders said, was Smith's plan to mount an unprecedented effort tracking — and diligently calling — absentee voters in all 58 counties of California from the very first day of early voting on Jan. 7 to the day of the primary.
Smith installed campaign managers in every county, who studiously tabulated the names of voters who had cast their ballots by mail — and then undertook the time-consuming effort of calling virtually all of the unreturned ballot-holders before the Super Tuesday primary.
From 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the night of the election, the campaign made more than an estimated one million calls — many of them on the cell phones of campaign volunteers — to California voters to make sure they went to the polls for Clinton.
Despite the momentum toward Obama that many of us in California experienced firsthand in the days leading up to Super Tuesday, the early votes Smith had stockpiled for Clinton kept our tremendous grassroots efforts from closing the gap. While stockpiling early votes may not turn out to be as relevant a factor in Texas (what you can pull off in under three weeks is different from what you can do over many months), Smith remains a formidable force. His strategy regarding absentee voting may prove less effective in a situation where the groundwork of early voter identification is likely nowhere near what it was in California, where the existing Villaraigosa machine was at work for Clinton much earlier in the process.
Bottom-line conclusion: No time to let up on any level in our efforts on behalf of Obama; the Clintons will "not go gentle into that good night."
Based on everything I've read here at Kos and elsewhere, I think the Obama campaign has a respectable shot at winning in Texas, or at least coming close enough to do well on the delegate front, but only with all of us continuing to put our money, time, and effort forth without reservation — knowing that we're up against a formidable adversary who is fighting all-out to win.