From tacos to BBQ, meet Clinton's dream team

Carrie Dann NBC/National Journal Reporter

PEMBROKE, N.C. - In a college gymnasium draped with banners of past athletic victories, his warmup could easily be mistaken for a school pep rally.

"We are undefeated," roars Mike Trujillo, Sen. Hillary Clinton's North Carolina field director. "We do not lose."

Jabbing a pointed finger at his own blazer lapel, he punctuates his claim with a defiant grin. "I do not lose."

In a state where the stakes are high and the demographic pie charts are stacked against the New York senator, the Clinton campaign is hoping that he's right.

Trujillo's high-octane cheerleading is far from modest; He's fond of the phrase "kick butt" in his warmup act at campaign rallies. But he has a point. The team he refers to — made of up of himself, political director Miguel Espinoza, and state director Averell "Ace" Smith — hasn't lost yet.

Bespectacled and soft-spoken, Smith has none of Trujillo’s swagger. But his devastatingly effective opposition research for Clinton and for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in California has earned him the nickname “Doctor Death.”

Smith masterminded Clinton’s victories in California and Texas, two states where the New York senator faced fundraising deficits and see-sawing poll numbers. Her unanticipated victory in the Texas primary, in particular, was largely credited to Smith's ability to mobilize community leaders and deploy Bill Clinton with exhaustive precision.

In Texas, where nearly half of all voters in the Democratic primary cast their ballots before the March 4 primary day, the Clinton campaign’s relentless focus early voting kept her numbers high and her name in the news. The strategy, says Smith, was to turn audiences into a steady stream of early ballots that would keep Clinton afloat during Sen. Barack Obama’s initial surges of popularity there.

“What happened in Texas was that we were clearly behind early,” he says. “Our early voting pretty much allowed us to hold our own, and then we beat them pretty soundly on Election Day.”

To keep that steady stream coming, Smith’s staff cast lines all over the state to reel on-the-fence voters in to early polling places. In Odessa, for example, those boasting an “I Voted!” sticker were ushered to front-row seats at a rally, and the spicy smell of free tacos often wafted in the air at outdoor campaign events held within sniffing distance of polling stops.

And then there was Bill.

The campaign’s chief surrogate held over 50 rallies in Texas, sometimes as many as six or seven a day. During his stump speeches, the former president appeared — often on the flatbed of a pickup truck — speaking to thousands in an Abilene airport hangar or as few as a hundred in an El Paso shopping center. An early vote location was always close by, either in a strip mall or a civic center just out of earshot of the loudspeakers that pumped out Clinton’s rapid-fire argument for his wife.

Adapting the Lone Star strategy
Since the contest for North Carolina began in earnest, the fingerprints of Clinton’s Texas dream team has been noticeable. Her husband has already has done a whopping 14 campaign rallies in the state, visiting the same mix of Clinton strongholds and pockets of unconventional voters who could be swayed by the visiting popular ex-president.

The field team’s trademark incentives for campaign volunteers are evident too. Last weekend, they introduced a new cell phone technology that allows supporters to participate in an impromptu phone bank in exchange for choice seating during the former president’s rallies. The arrangement, the campaign estimates, yielded over 11,000 calls made on Hillary’s behalf in a single two-day swing.

And there are other familiar refrains from the Texas strategy. With as many as six events in a day, often in towns mere miles apart and with populations sometimes no larger than 30,000, fatigued reporters and pundits in North Carolina wonder aloud why the visits all fall within the range of a single major city’s television and radio coverage area. But by Smith’s calculation, picking campaign stops based on local coverage is old news.

“Thinking in terms of media markets is really kind of old-fashioned thinking at this point,” he argues. “Ironically, we’ve moved back to an age when just talking to people at rallies and having them talk to their friends and their relatives and their social networks has a much greater impact.”

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