Road to White House crossing through Texas

It’s not just about bumper stickers and yard signs anymore.

Presidential hopefuls still in the race, after battling for support in Iowa and New Hampshire, know that Texas’ March 1 primary could help catapult them to the top of the leader board or potentially end their White House hopes.

Now candidates are beefing up their ground game here, opening campaign offices and phone banks, working to shore up support from Texas voters before the state’s primary election.

“Texas is one of the mega-states — along with California, New York and Illinois — because it has a huge pile of electoral votes and very deep pockets,” said Bruce Buchanan, a political science professor at the University of Texas who specializes in presidential politics.

“Texas is a high-profile state that attracts enormous attention.”

It’s rare that Texas has much of a voice at all in the presidential race, since the election is generally all but settled by the time voters here head to the polls.

But this year, there’s no clear winner in either the Democratic or Republican parties, as candidates have traded victories in earlier states.

Now Texas, with its generous number of delegates, looms as a major prize on Super Tuesday when more than a dozen states cast ballots.

“Texas is the crown jewel of the March 1 Super Tuesday,” said Jacob Limon, the Texas state director for the Bernie Sanders campaign. “It’s the biggest delegate haul of all the states that day.”

Republican moves

Most presidential candidates have already made their way to North Texas for political rallies, campaign events, book signings or fundraisers.

New campaign offices will likely be opening in the coming days, as work to get out the vote in Texas intensifies.

The Republican with the greatest advantage here is Ted Cruz, Texas’ junior senator, whose throngs of grassroots volunteers propelled him to victory in his 2012 Senate bid over the establishment favorite, David Dewhurst.

Cruz held rallies in Texas last year, including one in Fort Worth, and may return before the primary. There’s no word yet on whether a campaign office will open in North Texas, but countless volunteers here are already helping with Cruz’s presidential bid, said Tyler Norris, the Texas director of the Cruz campaign.

There’s a “Ted Cruz 2016” app that supporters can load onto their smart phones to update them on everything from preferred block-walking areas to local political events and gatherings.

And there’s a “call from home” system, where people register to make campaign calls from their home or host a mini-phone bank. Cruz’s leadership team includes supporters in all of Texas’ 36 congressional districts.

After the South Carolina primary, Cruz plans on a quick trip through southern states that will vote on March 1. No local campaign stops are scheduled yet, but Norris said he hopes this is an area the senator can revisit.

“Tarrant County has always been a huge base of support for Sen. Cruz,” he said. “We are relying on the network we had in 2012, plus tons of new people coming on board, to get it done.”

Fellow front-runner Donald Trump has long had a focus on Texas, hiring a state campaign director last year and making Texan Katrina Pierson, a Garland woman and voice of the Tea Party, his national spokeswoman.

His campaign staff hasn’t responded to questions about whether Trump campaign offices will open in North Texas.

However, the former reality TV star’s aggressive campaign travel schedule has already brought him to Dallas and may well bring him back to Texas for more rallies before the primary. And his campaign website asks supporters from each state to sign up to volunteer.

Fellow Republican Marco Rubio doesn’t yet have campaign offices set up in Texas or Tarrant County.

But Rubio has announced a Texas leadership team, including a handful of co-chairs, “who will continue working hard to energize supporters across the state as we approach the March 1 primary,” his staff says.

“We’re the only campaign that is organized in all 50 states, and we’re ready for the long haul,” said Micah Johnson, a regional spokesman for Rubio’s presidential campaign.

“We are encouraged by the outpouring of support from Texans eager to spread Marco’s message and help ensure that we nominate the candidate most capable of uniting the Republican party, growing the conservative movement, and defeating Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in November.”

Johnson also notes that former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas has endorsed Rubio.

Dueling Democrats

A number of Tarrant County Hillary Clinton supporters have been going through training, monitoring the Tarrant County Hillary Clinton 2016 Facebook page, finding information at hillaryclinton.com and manning phone banks to help the campaign.

Clinton offices have opened in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. A Tarrant County office could soon open as well, said Jason Smith, a local volunteer leader with the Clinton campaign and a Fort Worth attorney.

And a campaign staffer who manned the Iowa office has been assigned to Texas to direct volunteer efforts. “Hillary is ramping up fast in Texas,” Smith said.

Tarrant County Justice of the Peace Sergio De Leon recently talked to former President Bill Clinton in New Hampshire about the desire to have him, Hillary Clinton or their daughter, Chelsea, visit Texas and Tarrant County before the primary election.

“He understands that and wants to come back,” said De Leon, who has known the former first family since campaigning for Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign in the early 1990s. “That remains a work in progress.”

Bill Clinton will make a campaign appearance in Dallas on Monday, though. Details on when and where have yet to be released.

Hillary Clinton’s chief opponent, Bernie Sanders, set up campaign offices in Texas, including one in Dallas, and has been looking for a Tarrant County spot. But those efforts so far have been unsuccessful.

“We are trying to get a Tarrant County office,” said Limon, on leave from his job as chief of staff for state Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth, to serve as the Texas state director for the Sanders campaign. “If one pops up, we will jump on it.”

But Limon said that even without a brick-and-mortar office in Tarrant County, much work is still being done locally — from phone banks to debate watches at volunteers’ homes.

“We are working in Tarrant County every day,” he said. “We are organizing through whatever spaces we can find: union halls, libraries, people’s homes.”

Volunteers find where they can best help by going online to Sanders’ website and listing their zip code to locate an event near them.

Limon said he doesn’t know if Sanders will make another campaign stop in North Texas before the primary, but he hopes he will.

Other candidates

Several Republicans in the presidential race have dropped out or suspended their campaign since the Iowa caucus, including Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Rand Paul.

Ben Carson, who held a book signing in Fort Worth last year and participated in the North Texas Presidential Forum at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, has yet to set up local offices.

But “Carson America has a lot of support in Texas,” said Larry Ross, a Lewsiville man serving as communications director for Carson’s campaign.

In fact, there are 11 Texans on staff, including G. Michael Brown and Andrew Hughes from Fort Worth. And the staff knows that Texans are watching how the campaign is going in other states.

And they encourage supporters to go to Carson’s website at www.bencarson.com to find opportunities to volunteer with the campaign.

“Roughly a third of our live-stream watchers came from Texas the first time we did live streaming in Iowa, and Dr. Carson has more than 50,000 unique donors from across the state,” Ross said. “We are planning several campaign events, including some meet and greets, in the DFW area prior to March 1st.”

Others still in the race — including Midland-born Jeb Bush, whose brother, former President George W. Bush and mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush, have helped campaign for him — didn’t respond to requests for information about their ground game in Texas.

Jeb Bush’s son — Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, a former Fort Worth resident — has also been helping with the campaign.

This story was originally published February 18, 2016 at 7:27 PM with the headline "Road to White House crossing through Texas."