Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Call it the emerging swing vote of West Texas.

Next month, John Steinmetz will step down as chairman of the Lubbock County Republican Party, and though he will spend most of his working time in the private sector, he plans to remain actively involved in party politics.

His mission is to woo more Hispanics to the GOP.

"It is important for our party to reach out to Hispanics," Steinmetz said. "I have always believed that the conservative values and principles of the Republican Party are in line with Hispanic voters, and we should make every possible effort to let them know that they have a home in our party."

Abel Bosquez, chairman of the Potter County Democratic Party, said he has heard that kind of talk before - in fact, long before the March 4 Texas primary. And though Bosquez was pleasantly surprised with the much-larger-than-expected Democratic turnout in the Panhandle, he said his party will work just as aggressively to woo Hispanics and court new voters.

"We haven't analyzed the results, but there is no question that we need to make sure that these new voters, particularly Hispanics and blacks who traditionally vote Democrat, stay in our party," Bosquez said.

The story of Lubbock and Potter counties is the same story across the state. The Hispanic vote is becoming crucial in Texas politics, even in Republican strongholds such as the South Plains and Panhandle.

To Steinmetz, Bosquez and others, this became evident in Sen. Hillary Clinton's narrow victory over Sen. Barack Obama. Clinton won 67 percent of the Hispanic vote in the state's Democratic presidential primary, while Obama got solid support from African-Americans, young voters and the college educated.

For Republicans, what gives them hope is the fact that even though most Hispanics voted Democratic in the primary, many are new voters and can be persuaded to favor the GOP in future elections. As for Democrats, their challenge is to persuade them to keep voting Democratic.

In Lubbock County, for example, for the first time since Texas became a Republican-majority state, Democratic voters narrowly outnumbered Republicans, 23,955 to 23,365, according to the Texas secretary of state. Thanks in part to a large Hispanic turnout, that was twice as many Democrats as in the 2006 general election, but for Republicans it was actually 665 fewer voters.

And in Potter County, although Republican voters still outnumbered Democrats, 8,925 to 7,234, for the GOP it was a gain of 1,600 voters compared to the November 2006 election, while for the Democrats the gain was 3,839 - twice as many new voters.

"We are looking at the changing face of Texas," state Rep. Joe Heflin of Crosbyton, the only Democratic legislator in the South Plains/Panhandle delegation, said of the growing Hispanic population in West Texas.

"Texas is turning more to Hispanic majority," Heflin said. "What that means for my district is that we are going to see different faces elected in local races."

In Heflin's House District 85, which he narrowly won two years ago despite 65 percent of the voters voting Republican in other races on the ballot, 38.5 percent of the population is Hispanic, the highest percentage of any of the six House districts in the Panhandle/South Plains region.

Moreover, in 14 of the more than 50 counties in the South Plains and Panhandle, Hispanics are now in the majority, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Steinmetz said the key to wooing Hispanics to the GOP is to reach out to people like 27-year-old Veronica Lujan.

Lujan, who ran unsuccessfully for Lubbock County tax assessor, said she surprised many of her friends and acquaintances because she ran as a Republican.

"Everyone assumed that because I am Hispanic that I was a Democrat," Lujan said. "But I have always voted Republican."

And no one was more surprised than Lubbock County Commissioner Ysidro Gutierrez, who encouraged her to run.

But looking back, "she made the right decision," said Gutierrez, a longtime Democrat. "In this county, if you run in a countywide race you have to run as a Republican. If you don't you don't have a chance to win."

Lujan said even though she lost in the three-candidate tax assessor race, she hopes other Hispanics will be encouraged, not just to vote Republican, but to run for office.

"I hope they say if she can do it, I can do it, too,' " Lujan said.

The effort to woo the Hispanic vote in the South Plains and Panhandle has also gotten the attention of the Texas Republican and Democratic parties.

"The numbers we saw in Amarillo and Lubbock give us a lot of hope," said Texas Democratic Party spokesman Hector Nieto. "If this keeps up, in a few years our party will compete again in that region."

Keep dreaming, Texas Republican Party Chairwoman Tina Benkiser said in a recent interview. In West Texas, like the rest of the state, Hispanics identify more with the GOP's values and will vote Republican, she said.

Amarillo's state Rep. John Smithee, whose House District 86 is the most Republican in the state and, at 17.6 percent, has the lowest Hispanic population in the South Plains and Panhandle, also is watching.

"The demographics of our state are changing," mainly because of new Hispanic voters, Smithee said last summer.

Moreover, for the first time since he first ran for office in 1984, Smithee has a Democratic challenger in Amarillo attorney James Wood.

"If we're not careful, the Democrats can gain more on us," Smithee warned his party.