Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

In 1972, Hillary Clinton left Texas in far better shape than did Sen. George McGovern.

He got trounced in the Lone Star state in his campaign against President Nixon. But Clinton — then Hillary Rodham, a Yale law student — came away with ties to Hispanic voters that she now sees as crucial to her campaign for Texas' March 4 presidential primary.

She registered voters here and in the Rio Grande Valley, putting her on the doorsteps of numerous Latinos and in touch with local politicos and union organizers, for McGovern's campaign. Bill Clinton, her then-boyfriend, was organizing the state for McGovern.

When the registration period ended, she helped guide the San Antonio campaign in the last few weeks before the election.

Sen. Clinton, state Rep. José Menéndez and state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte — both San Antonio Democrats — hammered home that experience during her rally Wednesday night in St. Mary's University's sports arena.

"She stood with us then. We stand with her now," Van de Putte said to the largely Hispanic crowd of 5,000 supporters.

Clinton didn't mince words near the end of her 25-minute speech: "I need you to be there for me over the next three weeks."

Supporters and others make frequent reference to her "deep roots" in Texas. Now the fate of her campaign may hinge in part on how deep those roots really are.

The New York senator is counting heavily on Hispanic support in her bid to carry Texas and to slow — or stop — Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's momentum, powered by eight consecutive wins after Super Tuesday on Feb. 5. Winning in Ohio, also voting March 4, is likewise critical to the Clinton campaign.

Hispanics make up 36 percent of Texas' population, although the state estimates that they comprise 20 percent of registered voters.

Clinton's supporters say it helps that Obama is an unknown quantity in San Antonio and South Texas.

"He has no history here," said Bexar County Commissioner Paul Elizondo, who block-walked with Clinton along West Mistletoe before Wednesday's rally. "This is Clinton country. She hasn't been vilified here like she has in other places. People here like her."

La Joya Mayor Billy Leo has four photos of himself with Sen. Clinton hanging on his office walls.

"When (Bill) Clinton was running (in 1992), they came in right before the election, but then they came back," Leo said. "As a pair, they came back several times."

Obama surrogates, who include a group of mostly young, Hispanic state lawmakers, acknowledge Clinton's strong ties to the region. Also, many Latinos prospered in the 1990s, and they gave much of the credit to Bill Clinton, noted state Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas.

"We recognize we are coming from behind," he said. "But you can't speak generally about Latinos in Texas. There are many groups and subgroups."

His Texas backers say Obama will campaign aggressively for Latino support, and that he now has a track record of wooing undecided voters when he gets in front of them.

"We're immediately going to get him into the Valley," Anchía said. "We think that's important, to get a flag in the ground."

Obama supporters also say younger Hispanic voters don't have the same connection to the Clintons that their parents do, and may be more winnable.

Trench warfare

In 1972, Elizondo supervised music education in the Edgewood school district and dabbled in politics. He could have bumped into Clinton at one of the packed McGovern rallies where his band played. But if he did, he has no recollection.

What he does remember was the flow of young people into San Antonio to register voters in the region — something voting-rights advocate Willie Velasquez and Chicano activists already had well underway.

"There was a group of kids who came down from northern colleges — it was like the Peace Corps to them," he said. "Basically, they were all white."

Many McGovern volunteers came to town with only two or three contacts, recalled long-time community organizer Arnold Flores. He remembered Hillary Clinton from a crowded McGovern rally in the backyard of the late Democratic strategist and attorney Herschel Bernard.

In her 2003 memoir, "Living History," Clinton hinted at the culture clash.

"Hispanics in South Texas were, understandably, wary of a blond girl from Chicago who didn't speak a word of Spanish," she wrote. "I found allies at the universities, among organized labor, and lawyers with the South Texas Rural Legal Aid Association."

Franklin Garcia, a storied union organizer who died in 1984, essentially was Clinton's ambassador in South Texas. He took Clinton "places I could never have gone alone and vouched for me to Mexican Americans who worried I might be from the immigration service or some other government agency," she wrote.

But one of her first Texas contacts was Garry Mauro, who was signing up voters for an Austin-based not-for-profit in the summer of 1972. He said he found her "compelling" and "scary smart."

Mauro, a former state land commissioner who unsuccessfully challenged then-Gov. George W. Bush in 1998, is advising Clinton's Texas campaign.

Some northern political activists blew into Texas, Mauro said, assuming they knew how to win elections here. "She didn't do that. She asked questions and listened, then she asked some more questions and listened some more."

He said she also had an easy rapport with Latinos.

"She had a cultural affinity with Hispanics. It was apparent," Mauro said. "There's something about Catholic, Hispanic culture. You either get it or you don't."

In her behind-the-scenes campaign work, Clinton had no fluff that Joyce Peters could see.

When Clinton worked out of McGovern's campaign office on McCullough Avenue, double-checking voter registration cards, the Illinois native buckled down and stayed that way until she'd finished the job, even as other volunteers clowned around.

"We used to say there's not a belly laugh in her," said Peters, a McGovern volunteer who worked for the AFL-CIO's political education arm in San Antonio. "Hillary was very, very serious. She studied the issues deeply, and she really did care about improving people's lives."

Bill Clinton came from a different cast. Peters knew him from his swings through San Antonio, and saw that he had the affability of a natural politician.

"He would make that time to chew the rag with the fellas, as we say," she said. "He was more socially inclined. She was all business."

Hillary Clinton often ate at Mi Tierra and Mario's, and Peters remembered her as warm and engaging in her off hours.

Nixon carried Bexar County with nearly 56 percent of the vote, but McGovern's drubbing was worse state- and nationwide.

Andy Hernandez, an adviser for Clinton's Hispanic outreach in Texas, sat out the McGovern campaign in 1972. A Chicano activist and college student at the time, he was too dispirited after West Side Councilman Pete Torres lost the 1971 mayoral race and state Sen. Joe Bernal fell in the 1972 Democratic primary to then-state Rep. Nelson Wolff.

But he came face to face with Bill and Hillary Clinton before the 1992 primaries, in a hastily arranged briefing on Hispanic voting patterns en route to unseating President George Bush. Hernandez — then head of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project — came away impressed.

Bill Clinton "already knew a lot about South Texas," Hernandez said. "They were both trying to figure out what had changed from the time they'd worked here in 1972."

Mauro said the Clintons stayed in touch with South Texas politicos after decamping, and undertook a two-day blitz of the region in 1991 in preparation for Clinton's battle for the Democratic nomination.

"After that, Hillary made Texas a special project," Mauro said, noting she made numerous trips around the state. The Clinton operation "never stopped. It has been alive and well for years."

'Resources and bodies'

That has paid dividends as far as endorsements. In San Antonio, Clinton won the backing of Elizondo, former Mayor Henry Cisneros, Leticia Van de Putte, state Sen. Carlos Uresti, state Rep. Joaquin Castro and County Judge Nelson Wolff, among others.

Still, in Paul Elizondo's view, she doesn't have a lock on Hispanic voters — or officeholders — in the region.

"You've got a whole damn month out there. That's a long time to keep up the momentum," Elizondo said. "If all Hispanic elected officials were with her, it would be over. But some of them are with Obama."

In San Antonio, Obama won a coup with U.S. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez's recent endorsement. He also has the backing of state Reps. Trey Martinez-Fischer, Ruth Jones McClendon and Mike Villarreal, and former Mayor Ed Garza.

"They're going to commit resources and bodies," Martinez-Fischer said. "They're going to put on a campaign unlike any the state of Texas has seen."

The campaign launched Spanish-language television and radio ads on health care last week and on Saturday opened its headquarters for field operations in San Antonio.

In Brownsville, state Rep. Eddie Lucio III threw his support behind Obama after talking with Rep. Juan García — a friend of Obama's from Harvard School of Law — about his candidacy on the floor of the Texas House, then reading Obama's "The Audacity of Hope."

But Lucio's father, state Sen. Eddie Lucio, is sticking with Clinton.

The younger Lucio, who was 17 when Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, said that's exactly what he's expecting to see in the Rio Grande Valley: something of a generational split, with younger voters gravitating toward Obama and older voters toward Clinton.

"Down in the Valley, obviously the Clintons have a rich, rich history," he said. "But I think there's a (lot of) young voters who don't have a history with the Clintons. It's a clean slate."