LITTWIN: Battle for heart of Texas

By Mike Littwin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published February 29, 2008 at 12:30 a.m.
Updated February 29, 2008 at 12:17 p.m.

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Photo by Judy DeHaas / The Rocky

During a speech by presidential candidate Barack Obama, 16-year-old Robyn Medina shows her support inside the American Bank Center Arena last week in Corpus Christi. Robyn said she and her sister skipped school to attend.

Photo by Judy DeHaas / The Rocky

There's no mistaking educator Nancy Vera's loyalties. The Corpus Christi native wears a Clinton T-shirt and Clinton buttons. "We come together for Hillary," she says and tells of the long history of Clinton support for Hispanics in South Texas.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults. - the late, great Molly Ivins

Everything is big in Texas, except apparently for this undersized room where they've crammed in 200 people to see Bill Clinton.

This was not supposed to be a public event. Clinton was scheduled to stop by - he'd be late, of course - to thank his wife's campaign workers. But the news got out, and while 200 Clintonistas wait with varying degrees of patience inside - including a few who have to be carried out from the heat - many hundreds more are outside, some aggressively staking out positions to get just a glimpse of the Big Dog.

The cops are out in force. And somebody keeps yelling for people to get back, away from the door, but it is the kind of crowd for which getting back just doesn't seem like an option.

"My people are getting rowdy," says a Clinton volunteer manning the door. She smiles. "I can say 'my people,' because they are my people."

Her people - who, in the end, don't get rowdy at all - are the Hispanics who dominate this city and this region, here in South Texas, hard by the Rio Grande Valley, where, as Corpus political activist and one-time talk-show host Vicente Carranza explained to me, the people are not Anglo enough for Americans and not Mexican enough for Mexicans.

"We live in kind of a no-man's land," he says. He says if you draw a line from Corpus Christi across the state, coming just south of San Antonio, "you find a place that's at least 10 years behind the rest of Texas."

It's the part of Texas where the Democratic establishment has always delivered the votes and where Hillary Clinton desperately needs to win by a large margin if she hopes to carry Texas on Tuesday. If she doesn't carry Texas and Ohio, it may be the end of her campaign. The well-known political strategist, Bill Clinton, has said as much himself.

It's where Federico Pena, who grew up in South Texas, in Laredo, and who has campaigned throughout the valley for Obama, remembers how they used to get the vote out here.

"Do you know about the politiqueros?" asks the former Denver mayor who was, of course, a Clinton Cabinet member. "They're the women who were the key to every election. In the old days, a long time ago, you'd buy them a battery for their car, some gasoline, maybe some new tires, and they would deliver 50 voters. Literally deliver them. They'd pick them up, take them to the polls.

"That's changed today. The system, to the extent that it's alive and well, doesn't apply to the younger voters. The young voter is very independent. That's why you see so many of them voting for Obama."

This is also the part of the state with a negligible black population and where, I'm told, an African-American candidate might still be seen as a "stranger" and where one Hispanic reporter tells me he has friends who say they won't vote for someone from another minority group.

Luis Clemens, editor of the online blog CandidatoUSA, which tracks the presidential election from a Hispanic perspective, says that he worries about stereotyping, but that you can't avoid the issue of racial and ethnic divide.

We're sitting on press row at an Obama rally in an 8,500-seat arena in Corpus Christi. Obama draws an announced crowd of 6,545 (I'd have guessed 5,000), but which was - coincidentally, I'm sure - just larger than the 6,500 Hillary Clinton was said to have drawn in nearby Robstown. We can't decide whether to focus on the fact that it's an astonishingly large crowd for Obama here, in Clinton territory, or whether it's the rare Obama rally with empty seats.

"The crowd does not look very Hispanic," Clemens says as we watch. "This is very anecdotal. But what would you say - one in three?"

When Hillary Clinton spoke in Robstown, the crowd was overwhelmingly Hispanic. On this night in Corpus Christi, for Bill Clinton, it is, too.

At rallies throughout the state, people are counting the faces, although it's not as simple as that. A black mayor won in Houston with overwhelming Hispanic support. Hispanic officials in South Texas wonder whether the excitement for Obama will cost them too many younger Hispanic voters here. Early voting across the state is coming in at a record pace, and everyone is trying to figure out what it means. The most recent poll has Obama trailing in Hispanic votes here by only 6 percent - a figure that, if it held, would be a disaster for Clinton.

The Hispanic vote is critical for Clinton because, for all intents and purposes, she has become the Hispanic candidate. She won the California Hispanic vote overwhelmingly. She pulled out Nevada with the Hispanic vote. Hispanics have been her most loyal supporters.

Race and ethnicity matter here in Texas, as they do everywhere. But the issues may play differently. There are two numbers to consider, as several political experts explained to me. First, there are three times as many Hispanics as African-Americans in Texas. Second, African-Americans, however, are maybe twice as likely to vote. Some are even predicting that with enough Obama enthusiasm in the black community, the vote could be a wash - which is why the Clintons and a host of Clinton surrogates are desperately wooing the Hispanic vote.

Deep Hispanic roots

The Hispanic population here is long settled, in a town where Hispanics have deep roots and one that many immigrants, illegal or otherwise, pass by on the way to Houston or Dallas or San Antonio. Corpus Christi - and, by the way, the history books differ on how and when the town got its name - sits on the Gulf of Mexico. It has beaches, and it has large, old-style houses with a water view, and, for the fortunate, the view includes the Blue Ghost, a World War II era aircraft carrier that lights up blue at night. If you want to see how deep the Hispanic roots are here, you go to the mission-style cathedral and walk from there toward the sea to the World War II memorial and read the names: Alvarado, Cruz, Gonzales, Guzman, Perez, Rodriguez . . .

If you're young, though, you're tempted to leave town. There just aren't enough jobs here that pay.

Jessica Lugo, who's standing in front of me, says Hillary Clinton can change that.

"She's going to save my job," Lugo says. "She's going to save my house. She's going to make sure I have health care for my kids. I really think she's capable of turning around a lot of the problems we have now."

When I ask her about the politics of this town, she tilts her head toward a man standing on a chair, just behind the barrier separating the press from the Clinton supporters, so he can get a better view. The man is Carlos Truan, who was a state senator here for 34 years. He knows the Clintons from 1972 when he was a McGovern co-chairman.

He tells me, with some delight, that he's making nearly $100,000 a year in pensions from his years in the Senate. "We got $20 a day working at the legislature," he says. "Every time we asked for a raise, the voters said, 'Hell, no.' But we voted on our pensions ourselves."

He looks pleased with himself. He's certainly pleased to be seen again with Clinton, whom he calls Bill.

"We didn't know anything about the White House until Clinton got there. He gave us a way to identify with the White House. After eight years of Reagan, my Lord, we don't know the West Wing or the Rose Garden. But with Bill Clinton, we got invitations. He put people in the Cabinet. We belonged."

Suddenly, a roar goes up. Clinton has arrived. He goes to the microphone and speaks for all of six minutes. No one seems to mind.

The crowd outside is chanting, "We want Bill. We want Bill." Inside, the cameras and cell phones are at work.

'Texas is special'

Clinton is conducting a brief pep rally while explaining - once again - the byzantine two-step system here wherein you vote first and then you caucus. The delegate system, which works against the Clintons because it rewards those areas where Obama seems strongest, means Hillary Clinton could win the popular vote and still lose the delegate count.

"Texas is always unique," Bill Clinton says, and the crowd is getting loud, if not rowdy. "But I must say this election system of yours takes the cake.

"You know Texas is special. Texas will be the only place in American where you can vote legally twice in the same election."

A minute later, he's signing posters and then, suddenly, he's gone. Outside, the crowd rushes frantically for a chance to see him. You hate to tell them that he has slipped out the back.

A place where history matters

Texas is big. You don't need to be told that. It's big, and it's self-satisfied, and it's a political consultant's nightmare. Texas is the land of stereotype, but there are so many stereotypes jingle-jangling here. You don't fit Houston and Corpus Christi and El Paso and East Texas and Dallas and Crawford and all the rest into any political basket or, for that matter, a Neiman Marcus shopping bag. You spend money in countless TV markets. You gather in all the endorsements you can. And you hope for the best.

What does unite Texas is the sense of being, well, Texas. You get it when you walk into the Texas bar here, where the neon says it has been here since 1951. There's a large Texas flag. I don't remember seeing it, actually, but there must be, because there's always a large Texas flag. Texas was (briefly) a Republic, and has never gotten over it.

The campaign for Texas began in Austin last week at the debate, where the irony was thicker than - can we channel Dan Rather here? - than Colorado River mud. The debate was held in the Lyndon Johnson Library. It was Johnson who said upon signing civil rights legislation that Democrats would lose the South for 50 years. It's 40-some years later, and Barack Obama, a black man, may be on the verge of winning a presidential primary here and possibly the Democratic nomination along with it.

Texas is too big to tell the Texas story in this space. We'll tell two stories - one of Hispanics in South Texas and, very briefly of African-Americans in Houston. Harris County, which includes Houston, also just happens to have the fourth largest Hispanic population in the country.

You tell any story here with an eye to history. History is always nearby. It's as close as the Alamo. It's as Texas as a Larry McMurtry novel. It's as near to the heart as what Velma Rideau, an Obama volunteer, told me at a Michelle Obama rally in Houston the other night.

"I didn't want him to go to Dallas," she says, looking at me, and not having to explain. "But I couldn't do anything about it. I just prayed for him all day."

'We come together for Hillary'

Nancy Vera is not just a Clinton supporter. Nancy Vera, an educator with a doctorate, a Corpus native, a Democrat through and through, is a Clinton supporter. She's wearing a Hillary T-shirt, several Hillary buttons and is clutching a rolled-up poster signed by Bill Clinton, with a "Thanks, Bill Clinton." It already had been signed by Hillary. She was at the Clinton rally and stayed late. This is personal for her.

I ask her why this is supposed to be Clinton country. She tells of the long history here, of the Clintons' willingness to come to South Texas, and not just when one is running for president.

"The Democratic vote and the Hispanic vote will go to Hillary here," she says. "I'm positive of that. Obama is too new for some people here. Obama is like a stranger. Considering we only have 5 percent African-Americans here, that makes a big impact - because African-Americans aren't that prevalent here."

When I ask her to explain Obama's popularity, particularly in states without a large black population, she says, "I have a theory, but I don't know if it's kosher to say it. I think the United States still feels guilty about the slavery thing. I think some people are saying we'd better get him in because we mistreated the African-Americans. But come on, we've mistreated a lot of people in this country. A lot of immigrants have been mistreated. A lot of people here in South Texas were mistreated. We had lynchings in South Texas. We had poverty. We had all sorts of things. So, in a sense, we could all say the United States owes us something, but we don't."

What she says, instead, is that loyalty is the key here. And when you listen, you know this is an old story - of minority groups having to compete for limited resources.

"You know when you look somebody in the eye and that person looks back; that's how we are in the Latino community," she says. "We come together for Hillary. That's what I see here. No matter what faction of the Democratic Party you're in, we come together for Hillary.

"Now, oddly enough, we have a person here who grew up in the city of Robstown, who's a graduate of Harvard, a state representative named Juan Garcia. He went to school with Obama, and he's trying to drum up support for Obama here."

She gives a look.

"I don't know. I don't think this city is ready for that. We're not going to ostracize him for it, but . . . "

She pauses. I ask whether she thinks of this support for Obama as a betrayal. She gives me another look.

"I'd say disappointment," she says. "He wants to go up the ladder. Maybe he'll get a position at the national level. But what about us? What about the poverty-stricken people he leaves behind? Is he going to remember us? Is Obama going to remember South Texas? I think Hillary will. I really think she will."

A matter of loyalty

I didn't run into Garcia, but I did catch Eddie Lucio III, who, at 29, is Texas' youngest state representative. He's from Brownsville, which is over 90 percent Hispanic. He's an Obama supporter. His father, state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., is backing Clinton. There's a trend here, and he knows exactly what Vera is saying.

"No doubt about it," he says. "I hear that all the time. People call my dad and tell them how disappointed they are in me for backing Obama."

It's a matter of loyalty. And it's also, he concedes, in part, a matter of race.

"It is with some in the community, particularly among some of the older people. They grew up in a different generation, not knowing many African-Americans. It's just kind of an unknown, and that can be scary. In my generation, we've gone off to school. We've met different kinds of people. We realize we're just one people.

"But we're just now breaking down the barriers. If you just want to be brutally honest, we're looking at the first black president or the first woman president. To say that's not in play, that would be a misstatement."

I ask him how he presents Obama to his audience.

"As a practical matter, it's tough, because people don't come out and just say it. You do it by not focusing on differences. You point out what he's done for his community and create a scenario they relate to - a man raised by a single mom who's had to struggle and who has had to make his own breaks. You show that there's no difference here based on culture. That his story resonates with all cultures."

Echoes of King, Kennedy

There are stories and there are stories. I go to Houston to get a better understanding of this one. I had been to South Carolina and seen the shift, over a year or so, from lukewarm support for Obama in the black community to something like fervor by Election Day.

It feels like more than fervor here in Houston's black community. It's certainly more than just a political campaign. I stop by This Is It, a soul food restaurant in Houston's Fourth Ward. The neighborhood has left the restaurant behind, giving way to high rises. But you can hear the echoes. And the food - try the ox tails - is still great.

Henry Gomez is here from Galveston. He says he comes for the food. He's also wearing an Obama button.

When I ask him why he's for Obama, we get echoes again. He goes back to his childhood in San Antonio and how he remembers his grandmother asking him to lift her dress as she walks in a procession to the cathedral.

"I thought it was a parade," he says. It was a procession for a Mass for John Kennedy.

"My uncles, they fought in the Korea war and the Japan war and the German. And they wanted change from Eisenhower. I was for Clinton, but when my daughter told me it was time for a change, I woke up. It was almost the same thing my uncles told me. I'm hard-headed. You can't say nothing about the Clintons to me. But it took my daughter to tell me that her daddy was wrong. And you know daddy's never wrong."

More echoes. Sitting in a booth is a woman wearing a bright yellow jacket, with every accessory to match. I knew this woman. She could have been my grandmother. Nothing was amiss. Everything about Johnnie Mae Jackson was, well, perfect.

She is sitting across from Charles Randolph, who used to be a barber. And they would get together Sunday at church and Monday, his day off, for lunch. Now he is retired. They're both 78. And it seems as if they are - what we used to call - courting.

He just watches and listens as she talks. She tells me how inspired she is by Obama. She had grown up in Houston on an all-black street in an otherwise all-white neighborhood. She had gone to college at the Houston College for Negroes, now Texas Southern.

"What it means?" she says. "You just don't have the words to express what it means, except gratitude. I'm grateful that the Lord is allowing me to be here to see this."

Charles tells her she sounds like a politician. She smiles. But then, suddenly, he breaks in.

"I didn't go to school to get an education. But I have seen with my own eyes that change has to be paid in blood."

He starts to cry.

"Martin Luther King . . . before him, the Democratic president. I'm so afraid this could cause bloodshed. I'm so afraid. In the Bible, Christ said, 'Take me.' King said, 'I'm ready.' "

Randolph is crying harder. He draws his hands to his heart.

"I was looking at it (on TV) when King was assassinated. I could see the victim, but I couldn't see the killer. I could see him fall. I heard about Kennedy on the radio. I was driving my truck . . ."

He's afraid, he says, the same thing could happen to Obama. Johnnie Mae Jackson says she remembers watching Bobby Kennedy die, but she's not afraid. She's ready to vote. She's ready for the future.

"You can say anything you want," she says, "but this is history. A woman and a black man. This is definitely history."

littwinm@RockyMountainNews.com

• February 29, 2008

  8:08 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  dilligaf writes:

  theQ:
  Sorry but the counrty will always be divided. When we have black history month, the american negro college fund, and affirmative action it will divide us.

• February 29, 2008

  8:10 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  gunner writes:

  To theq, you might want to learn how the English language works (its you're not your) before you start calling people racist.

• February 29, 2008

  8:36 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Diff writes:

  gunner - is that really nessasary? - your picking fly poop out of the pepper
  We are a nation of different people and heritages brought together. I for one see nothing wrong with identefying that as long as it is done in a respectful and non-threatening way. We will never be a homogenious country!
  The melting pot is more a stew - than a soup!
  Savor ALL the parts ...

  ( hey I left a few misspellings in just to give you something to do gunner - Happy Leap-day)

  Hint: - homogeneous,identifying are two of - X

• February 29, 2008

  9:09 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  PonchoVia writes:

  The Democratic party would do well to choose Obama. He has the best chance of beating McCain. If Clinton gets the nomination, independents (like me) and middle of the road conservatives (who may not otherwise vote) will come out strongly for McCain.

• February 29, 2008

  3:06 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  Diff writes:

  I must generally agree with you BigD!
  I would think it would benefit the Dems as a whole if Clinton stepped out and give Obama a better shot at beating Mac in November.
  I also like Richardson for VP tho I doubt he will get the call.
  That of course cannot happen until the convention.

• February 29, 2008

  3:09 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  redwhiteandBLUE writes:

  Tenth paragraph, F. Pena comments, he's endorsed Obama and Obama
  on his last debate with H.R.C. made it clear if he's elected he'll pass 'The Dream Act" which includes amnesty. A pandora's box.

• February 29, 2008

  4:38 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  Civility writes:

  Adelante Con Clinton!

• February 29, 2008

  10:33 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  redwhiteandBLUE writes:

  No se puede!

• March 1, 2008

  12:02 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  MereMortal writes:

  Are you getting paid by the word these days? Get to the point, man.

  "Texas was (briefly) a Republic, and has never gotten over it."

  And you never miss a chance to denigrate liberty.

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