Texas Two-Step

830 PM: I had just escorted Maria Hernandez to and from her caucus site at Austin High School in north El Paso. Headquarters was as empty as I had seen it as most of the volunteers were still caucusing. I walked back to the phone banks where our lawyer and logistics captain were locked in a heated discussion.

“We have got to get a packet out to 1xx as quickly as possible,” Kate, the lawyer, said.

“I don’t have a car for you,” Christian said.

“I’ve got a car,” I said, walking up behind them.

“Then take this down,” Kate said.

She gave me the name of our precinct captain, Oscar ______ who was supposedly on site, a phone number and an address. Christian, a hulking wise-guy from Flushing, Queens, scrambled to get me directions.

“Make sure you get this packet directly in to Oscar’s hands,” Kate said. “Don’t let anyone else touch it. Watch them do the count if they’ll let you.”


In the matter of 90 minutes the Texas two-step had taken me 360 degrees. Early reports of egregious voting fraud committed by local Obama supporters left the staffers wary of a dirty fight in the state of Texas. Around noon several of our precinct captains began calling with reports that Obama partisans had obtained the caucus packets from the precinct judges. These packets were critical to running the caucus as they contained the voter sign-in sheets used to tally the caucus goers, the minutes and instructions, the worksheets for computing the number of delegates, and the reporting procedures that included the all important green sheet with a secret pin code necessary to dial in the delegate count. By late afternoon we had received complaints in 15 locations in El Paso and the surrounding towns. In a couple of cases the people who had stolen the packets were signing people into the caucus that afternoon as they left the primary. The advantage gained, of course, was that these voters would not need to come back to their precinct for the caucus if they had already signed in.

The Obama campaign had officially pulled out of El Paso a week before the primary and hadn’t conducted the caucus trainings the Clinton camp ran all week. His supporters generally had little knowledge about the caucus process. The one thing they did seem to know was to get their hands on those green sheets.

A couple of these folks will almost certainly be going to jail. One supporter who had asked for and received the packet in the afternoon had removed the green sheet before caucus began. This man then waited until after the caucus and phoned in the results, flipping the delegate count to Obama’s favor. Another supporter had been dumb enough to phone in all the delegates from his precinct in favor for Obama. In a city where Clinton won over 70 percent of the popular vote, and won virtually every caucus, there is one precinct that has reported 100 percent of its delegates for Obama. Not even the Texas legislature could gerrymander that well. That this same fraud, stealing the green sheets, was attempted other several times suggests that someone was telling these people what to do if they got their hands on the packet. I am NOT suggesting that anyone in the Obama campaign had a hand in this. The less appealing side of a grassroots campaign are the neophyte participants turned zealots who lose sight of the spirit of the Democratic process and have little regard for the rule of law.

I didn’t have all the details that afternoon, but I was a part of the fire drill team that contacted every Hillary precinct captain in the county and encouraged them to get to their polling site, contact the judge, and make sure that he or she understood the rules that clearly state the caucus materials are to remain in their hands until 715 or until the last voter at the precinct casts his ballot in the primary.

So I was expecting the worst at the precinct I attended with Maria. Yet the caucus at Austin High School was more lithium convention than the rowdy pep rally we had promised our supporters. There were certainly no shenanigans. The mostly Latino and elderly crowd sat quietly in the school cafeteria, signed the caucus rolls. Maria looked nervous. Nearly 75, she did not speak English and did not trust my Spanish. So I would tell Graciela what was being said at the front of the room and she would translate for Maria.

The caucus goers nominated the election official present to chair the meeting. Then the woman who had passed the sign in sheets was nominated secretary, though tried several times to refuse. The old people took a long time to sign the forms, and those who only spoke Spanish even longer. The print was small and the Spanish speakers were rightly wary sign a document without a proper explanation. Maria and I sat and waited next to Jose and Graciela Sanchez, a 60 something bilingual couple native to El Paso.


“Why do we have to vote twice?” Jose said, looking at me. “We sure have a strange system in Texas.”

“Shut up. You just be glad you have the right to vote,” Graciela said to her husband. “You just be quiet, you Communist.”

But I thought Jose had asked a good question, one I hadn’t heard a good answer for. Why do these people have to vote twice in a day?

I watched the count, more curious for the results than anything, and the chair read off a steady stream of Clintons occasionally interrupted by an Obama.

Then they filled in the formulas (see explanation on Day 3 report). The final result was 77-14 for Clinton, which netted her eight delegates to Obama’s one.

The chair chose delegates and alternates from the caucus goers. Two Obama people quickly volunteered.

“Cohen, that’s a Jewish name,” Graciela said, nodding to the table with the Obama delegate. “Damn Jews.”

Her husband shrugs. Limited sample size, but Clinton seems to be doing well with the McCarthyist, anti-semite vote.

Graciela wanted to be a delegate for Clinton, but so did a good number of the other elderly supporters. She lost three coin flips and ended up an alternate.

I took Maria home. She had been my only passenger of the day. My van netted one extra caucus vote. Though without Maria's signature, Obama would have picked up another delegate in her precinct, So I scored it 127 bucks for one precinct delegate. This is not what I had expected. I had gotten up at sunrise to pick up the van I had promised the campaign for the get out the vote drive. I had asked the coordinator Monday if there was a need for additional transportation, and he was very enthusiastic to have the extra capacity, that yes, there was a great need for a van. When I rolled into the headquarters Tuesday I was told by the same person that I wouldn’t be asked to drive until “the caucus shift”, meaning they didn’t need me to drive anyone to the polls.

So it wasn’t until 830, and the pandemonium at precinct 1xx, that I was jazzed to be speeding down the dark city streets of El Paso. I kept looking down at the map resting on my thighs. It was a ten-mile drive southeast to the elementary school holding the caucus where Oscar was waiting for me to deliver a copy of the minutes and caucus instructions they hadn’t been able to find in the official packet. It seemed impossible I could drive this far south without crossing into Mexico. Then I noticed the fence on my right running parallel to the street. I was 100 yards from the Mexican border. I called Oscar, and told him to meet me outside.

There were only a handful of cars left in the parking lot at Chavez Elementary. Oscar met me and led me into the gym, where a dozen people were sitting in folding chairs and two women stood at a podium with signature sheets and the papers with the caucus formulas. No contention, angry supporters, or battling for the minutes now in Oscars hand. The scene was almost too tranquil. They had called the office as much for a helper as for materials.

Patricia, who had been elected chair of the caucus, had no idea how to fill out the forms or award the delegates. She handed me a list of the signed in caucus goers and asked me if I could compute the formulas and fill out the paperwork.

“No, I can’t do that,” I said. I explained that I was an out of state observer and a volunteer for Hillary Clinton. The only thing I could do was to observe the caucus. Fortunately, the instructions were straightforward once I suggested to her where she start reading. Then to the delegate math. Oscar, Patricia and her quiet friend made a go at the the formula. Fortunately the math was not that complicated, nor in this case necessary. This had not been a contested caucus. Of the 105 people on the caucus sheets, there were only four Obama supporters. Since there were 15 delegates to be awarded in the precinct, it would have taken seven supporters for the Obama group to form a caucus. Since they hadn’t met this threshold, Obama did not have enough support to earn a delegate from the precinct. The only problem reported at this precinct was the case of a Clinton supporter whom the record shown having voted early but was not allowed to caucus by the precinct judge. Her vote would have made it 102-4.

It was painful watching Patricia and Oscar lumber through the formula and the minutes sheet, especially knowing that the returns would be flowing in by now from the primary. I wanted to get to the party surely underway at headquarters. I had a good feeling that if the level of Clinton support in El Paso was reflective of the support in the border towns south and east along the fence that ran behind this school all the way down to Brownsville, Hillary would pull out a victory in Texas.

But this scene at Chavez Elementary was the caucus. Oscar and Patricia fumbling through the Texas Two Step that only a handful of people understood how and no one could explain the why.

I dialed into NPR on the way back up the border. Clinton had won in Ohio and was pulling ahead in the primary tally here in Texas. Time to pull some Clintonista ass.

And as Jose and later my father pointed out, I can one day tell my grandchildren about my bit part in the Texas Two-Step. Click Here to Read More..

The Battle for Texas: The Clintons’ Last Stand?

For the next five days I will be reporting from the Clinton campaign office in El Paso, Texas. keep scrolling down for new entries, all on this post.

Friday February 29th

Day 1: El Paso Bound

I’m not even sure myself why I am headed to Texas today. In part I’m driven by the absurdly stilted pro-Obama coverage from the national media. Lisa sent me a link to the Volunteer for Hillary site, and I filled it out at halftime of UT-Vanderbilt on Tuesday while watching the MSNBC commentators fawn for Obama and grill Hillary in the Ohio debate. It was almost a reenactment of the Saturday Night Live parody of the media’s love affair with Obama. I find his populist posturing disturbing, though not nearly creepy as the vibe I get from his supporters. JFK was a young senator too, they tell me. That’s right, I say, the man, with a decade more of congressional experience, who brought us the Bay of Pigs and to the brink of nuclear war. Though it is a near consensus that he has already won, I cannot believe this race is over. How could the Clintons go out without one last comeback? I like a good underdog, and yes, I like Hillary Clinton.

I believe Hillary represents the best combination of experience and competence of the remaining candidates. Though she remains a polarizing figure for many Americans she has demonstrated the ability to work with colleagues from both sides of the aisle and had gained the respect of her peers in the Senate. Her experience on the Committee on Foreign Relations and eight years in the White House has her better positioned to begin her term as a competent Commander in Chief. Yes, she voted to authorize the War in Iraq, but she did so after reviewing what turned out to be at best dismal, at worst manufactured intelligence. Obama did not vote for the war because he was not yet in the Senate.

And maybe that’s all bullshit. Though I carry a vague dislike of Obama-mania, and nostalgia for the Clintons, I don't see myself the kind of political partisan who flies half way across the country to join a campaign. So maybe I’m here for the story, for a closer seat for what might be the Clintons’ last campaign. Credentialed journalists have an easier time getting access than a lone blogger lacking readership and ad revenue. The best way to for me to get more than the CNN coverage is to embed in the trenches of a campaign office. I chose El Paso, because it was the first city the organizer in Austin mentioned where there was a need, especially for bilingual volunteers. And it’s a hell of a lot closer than Laredo or Brownsville.

There was a group of six young men and women seated in the boarding area I immediately pegged for campaign types. By their enthusiasm I could have guessed their candidate. Sure enough, two of them were wearing their “HOPE” pins. Three staffers and three volunteers, this flight is 6 to 1 for the Obama people. Limited sample size, bad omen.

I sat next to one of the volunteers, a SF State political science grad student interning with Barbara Lee, the congresswoman representing Oakland. He was pretty smug about their chances, smug about everything, and kept talking about how Texas would be the knockout punch for the Obama campaign.

Two volunteers, one from Marissa from LA and Rachel from Brooklyn (Rachel had grown up in El Paso), picked me up at the airport and delivered me to my host house. They were still pumped up from tonight’s visit and speech by General Wesley Clark who is making the rounds in Texas for the Clinton team. After a thorough replay of his speech, most of which centered on Hillary’s superior foreign policy resume, I learned that for the Clinton camp, El Paso is a turnout game. This is Clinton country. Eighty three percent of the population is Latino and NAFTA is not an ugly word here. Rachel, the woman raised in El Paso, pointed out the window to the city lights as far as I could see south of where we were driving along I-10.

“All of that is Juarez, with all the factories. The lights are new, that side of the border wasn’t lit up like that when I was growing up here.”

My hosts are a friendly older couple, Eric and Reb. He is a public defender and she is a painter. We had the obligatory political chat over a late night grilled cheese, and though I mentioned my concerns about the love-sick journalists, I tried to keep my comments positive and pro-Hillary rather than anti-Obama. But I had been delivered to the right household. Eric was an easy going Atticus Finch type until the subject of Obama came up. He delivered a tirade against Obama, a man, who he claims has yet to finish job in his life. Obama-mania is driving him bonkers.

Early voting ended today, and El Paso cast approximately four times more votes over the 2004 turnout.

Time for bed.

Day 2: Understanding the Texas-Two Step

"Hello?"
"Hello, is this Dolores."
"Yes"
"Hi, my name is Bill. I'm calling for Texas for Hillary."
"No English."
"Esta bien. Me llamo Bill. Soy volantario en la campana de Hillary Clinton en Tejas."
"Todavia vote."
"Gracias por su apoyo! Martes hay OTRA eleccion, un caucus..."

A day at the phone banks. More than two thirds of the Hispanic households in El Paso are bilingual, so I did most of my pitching today in English. Most of our work focused on people we know attended early voting and voted for Hillary. Because Texas has to do things bigger and more outlandish han the rest of the country, in addition to a primary, Texas holds a caucus held as soon as the last voter walks out of the booth in each precint on Tuesday night. The caucus counts for 30 percent of the delegate count, so turnout is vital. Unfortunately, El Paso has a disportionately low number of caucus delegates since the allocation is based on voter turnout on previous years' elections. Austin a comparably sized city has 8 caucus delegates to the 3 delegates for El Paso.

Tomorrow I will dive into the mechanics of a caucus, Texas style.

Tonight we are going to a monster truck rally. I have always wanted to go to a monster truck rally.



Day 3: Sunday Morning Sidewalk


This morning a group of us politicked in the old school. We loaded up with flyers about the primary and caucus and hit the local churches. We did not encounter a single Obama canvasser on the religious stump. Later in the evening we passed the Obama office in El Paso, and out of curiosity went inside to see the state of things.

Bleak. There were only a handful of people in the small office on the corner of a strip mall facing the interstate. The volunteer at the desk didn’t offer us stickers, or ask us to sign up to volunteer. Obama has officially pulled the plug on his El Paso operations. The two remaining staffers felt abandoned and were now locked in their office chain smoking.

The disorganization in the Hillary camp is not much more encouraging. The staffers in charge are kids straight out of college, and they don’t have the experience to function rationally given their chronic sleep deprivation. I was given an assignment yesterday to call a list of people who were already confirmed to be attending a meeting at our headquarters later that day. I was to tell them that there would be a special meeting for them since they were being asked to be precinct captains, the rep. in charge of the Hillary caucus goers, in a district where they may not be pre-assigned chair of the meeting (more on that below). The net of it is, I spent two and a half hours calling people who could have been informed of this special session in a 15 second announcement at the meeting we knew they were attending. I suggested this option to the young man who gave me the assignment. For a second I thought he was going to slap me.

The state machine is not exactly well-oiled. The campaign sent out a nationwide call for volunteers with a phone number to call, which turned out to be the cell phone of the one volunteer coordinator for the state of Texas. Understandably she is overwhelmed in her position, I can personally vouch for dozens of volunteers who have given up on their plans to come to Texas because she either did not answer their requests for information, or was snippy with them on the phone.

I promised an explanation of what both candidates are now calling The Texas Two Step. In addition to a primary, a regular ballot vote, in Texas there is also a caucus, which resembles a political pep rally with a head count at the end. Only people who have cast a ballot in the primary are eligible for he caucus, which begins after the last ballot is cast at a given precinct. The voters must sign in with proof they have already voted, usually a stamped voting card, though the voter rolls can also be checked, and they file into the caucus room. After the primary vote, when signs and campaign literature cannot be brought within100 feet of the school, anything goes, and partisans can bring all their gear to the caucus sight. The campaigns are encouraging their supports to be loud, and to try to sway anyone who looks unsure to join their side of the room
Eric, the public defender who is my host, fears the worst for what might ensue in these rowdy caucus rooms.

“Do they know what they doing asking people to get riled up like that? I don’t think they realize the violence here in El Paso. People don’t think anything about getting into fist fights. I don’t know where else you can go in this country and see the women get into brawls,” Eric, my volunteer host, said.

In many precincts the party will have designated a caucus chair responsible for running the meeting, though in cases where this person does not show or has not been assigned, anyone eligible to caucus is eligible to take charge of the meeting. For this reason the Hillary office has spent days seeking out precinct captains from among the voter rolls and has held training sessions for these individuals so they know how to come to the front of the room, seize the caucus packet and nominate themselves to chair the meeting. I have no idea what will happen in a room where the precinct captain from each contingent makes a grab for the materials.

If order holds, the chair will certify the precinct captains from each candidate and will then oversee the nomination of a secretary who will be in charge of the final count of caucus goers. Then count begins, in a procedure determined by the chair. Once the count is finished and deemed satisfactory by observers on both sides, the math begins. Each precinct has a predetermined number of delegates, this number I used to divide the total number of attendees, and the result is the number it takes to form a caucus, the threshold of voters needed to support a candidate in the caucus. So if a few unrepentant Dennis Kucinich voters are in attendance, but the caucus number (total persons/delegates) is more than there number, then they are asked to switch to their second candidate. And then the pep rally begins, sign wielding supporters trying to sway the uncommitted to join their side of the room. Once the caucus groups have been determined, the number of supporters for each candidate is divided by the total number of people present at the caucus. The resulting fraction is multiplied by the total number of delegates and rounded down to an integer. If the rounding leaves one delegate unaccounted for, the last delegate is awarded to the group with the highest decimal value before rounding. If there is a tie out to three decimal places, the chair flips a coin.

Got it? That’s the theory anyway. We’ll see what happens Tuesday.

Day 4: Bill visits El Paso



If Hillary pulls out Texas, it is thanks to the people along the US-Mexican border. From Brownsville to El Paso, this is Clinton land. Obama didn’t visit the border until late last week, his only appearance in south Texas.

Today’s focus was President Clinton’s visit tonight at 8pm in a hanger at the El Paso airport. Hundreds of supporters braved an unusually late cold snap, 40 degrees and howling winds, as they waited for an hour in line before entering the hanger. I walked up the line explaining the caucus procedure to anyone with questions and helping people identify their precincts. Most of the people I have talked to in El Paso, on the phone, on the street, and here at the rally, had no idea about the caucus. It is difficult to answer the "why?" of the caucus, I explain it is more of a party than the primary, an opportunity to celebrate your candidate, as caucus goers are allowed to carry signs and wear buttons into the precincts. They can bring their kids, non-registered relatives and friends to the site, and we are encouraging everyone to try and sway any undecided in the room. The rally got off on time, and a number of local and New Mexico dems warmed up the crowd by repeating the message that in Texas you can vote twice and it’s not against the law.


I had never seen Bill live before, and he was every bit the speaker I expected. Even though he shows all of his 62 years, half the room swooned each time he reached out and pointed to another member (woman) in the crowd. The speech covered bread and butter issues from health care to national security, with an ample serving of Bush bashing. Bill can preach to the choir with the best, and he warmly recounted the many instances of Latino contributions and support to the Clinton family.

The Hillary campaign here has focused a majority of its energy on caucus turnout over the past week, canvassing people who have already participated in the early voting to come back on Tuesday night. All this energy is a fight for 1 extra delegate to the national convention. El Paso has 3 delegates in total, and Hillary would need about 85% of the vote to pick up all three.

The real difference El Paso can make, in my opinion, is in closing the gap in the popular vote, which will be crucial when jockeying for the super-delegates as the winner of the national popular vote will have a strong case as the deserving nominee in the possibility of a brokered convention. But I’m not on the payroll here, and I imagine those are the marching orders that are received from the national office--to win the caucus sites tonight. This is a crucial strategy in Houston, Dallas, and Austin where there are a disproportionate number of caucus delegates to be won, but less sensible in the under-represented Brownsville to El Paso corridor. And they are competing strategies; it’s a depth of support versus breath of turnout play, asking for additional support from select early voters as opposed to reaching new voters. Given the size of the Latino population along the border, this could prove a crucial mistake, especially given the razor thin margins in the polls. It begs the question of who is running the national campaign. According to recent reports, it’s not Mark Penn. I couldn’t imagine that Penn, the acknowledged guru of micro-trends, would fail to recognize a need for multiple strategies in a race in such a large and complicated state as Texas. Apparently Penn just wrote a letter to the LA Times distancing himself from the campaign, noting that he had no one answering to him and was not part of the executive decision making.

Tomorrow we’ll get out the vote. Click Here to Read More..