Not his first rodeo: Bernie the man to beat in Texas

MESQUITE — This was certainly not Bernie Sanders’ first rodeo as a polemicist whipping a mostly young crowd of some 5,000 into a frenzy with his call for a democratic socialist revolution in America via the ballot box.

But his rally Friday night at the Mesquite Rodeo in suburban Dallas might have been the first in a venue usually devoted to steer wrestling, calf roping and bull riding.

“I have never been to a rodeo in my life, but I do work in Washington, D.C., and I do hear a lot of bullshit,” declared the Vermont senator with his unmistakable Brooklyn accent and brusque cadence.

Sanders arrived in Texas just more than two weeks before the March 3 Super Tuesday primaries in Texas and 13 other states when 34% of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee in July will be chosen. Texas and California hold the biggest troves of delegates.

Sanders, making his second run for president after a long and sometimes bitter contest with Hillary Clinton in 2016, is better positioned at the moment than any other candidate for what’s ahead, coming off what was essentially a tie with former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses and a narrow victory Tuesday over Buttigieg in the New Hampshire primary.

But, if he arrived in Texas as a front-runner, it was more a trot than a gallop, in what now promises to be a long war of accretion for delegates in a proportional allocation system that will complicate any candidate’s ability to assemble a majority of delegates before the convention.

Sanders offered what might or might not have been a shot across the bow at billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg, who is turning Texas into a test of the power of money to quickly and decisively move public sentiment in a hard-to-parse presidential race.

“I know a little about the power of the 1%,” Sanders proclaimed. “I understand that the billionaire class has endless amounts of money. They have been buying elections, and we’re seeing that right now. But at the end of the day, while the billionaire class is in fact enormously powerful with endless amounts of money, the 1% is 1%.”

A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll released Friday has Sanders vaulting past former Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts’ Sen. Elizabeth Warren since its last poll of Democratic voters in October. Sanders is at 24%, Biden at 22%, and Warren at 15%. Bloomberg, the former three-term mayor of New York City who skipped the early contests for Super Tuesday, is at 10%.

The poll says that Trump would beat Sanders by 2 points, within the poll’s margin of error, Warren by 3 points, Biden by 4 points, and Bloomberg, Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Klobuchar, by 5 points each.

Both Biden and Warren are coming off dismal showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, and much in Texas depends on whether either can revive their fortunes in the Nevada caucuses next Saturday and the primary the following Saturday in South Carolina ahead of Super Tuesday.

“I'll be damned if we're going to lose this nomination, particularly if we're going to lose this nomination and end up losing an election to Donald Trump,” Biden, 77, said on a Wednesday evening call with supporters.

“Let me begin by making a dramatic announcement: We’re going to win the state of Texas,” the 78-year-old Sanders said in Mesquite.

’A different dynamic’

Twenty-four hours earlier, Bloomberg, who turned 78 Friday, was speaking at a Harris County Democratic Party dinner in downtown Houston.

Then he addressed 700 African Americans at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, where he was endorsed by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser and others, and he apologized for the practice of stop and frisk during his tenure as mayor.

Stop and frisk refers to a police policy of stopping and patting down people — frequently young black and brown men who had done nothing to arouse suspicion — for questioning.

“I should have acted sooner and faster to stop it, and for that I apologize,” said Bloomberg.

“I defended it, looking back, for too long because I didn’t understand then the unintended pain it was causing to young black and brown families and their kids,” Bloomberg told the black audience.

Bloomberg then laid out his ambitious Greenwood Initiative that would seek to increase generational wealth accumulation in the black community by expanding access to homeownership and making strategic investments in black-owned businesses and poor neighborhoods.

In his passionate introduction for Bloomberg, Turner said that Bloomberg’s apology for stop and frisk was a precondition for his endorsement.

“I thought this was going to be the death knell for the campaign, but I think he handled it in a way that was appropriate and pragmatic,” University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus said.

“It was my first time seeing him. I was glad he addressed his support for stop and frisk and was being very sincere and acknowledged and recognized his mistake,” said Jordan Aré, a 27-year-old Dartmouth graduate and financial adviser in Houston.

“I feel like right now he’s getting a lot of momentum,” Aré said. “I listen to NPR every day and for the last three, four, five days, you hear Bloomberg, Bloomberg, Bloomberg, Bloomberg.”

“He brings a different dynamic. I have not completely identified what that is yet,” Aré said. “At the end of the day the Democratic Party is going to want to get behind a candidate. I think if it’s Bernie Sanders, it’s going to be a little bit more difficult. I think Bloomberg is starting to make noise at the right time.”

Of Bloomberg’s lavish spending on his own behalf, Aré said: “I think people understand that it’s his own money. It’s not like he’s out there asking billionaires for money.”

Thanks to his virtually bottomless pockets, Bloomberg’s late-blooming campaign has a staff of 2,400, including 150 in Texas. It has opened more than 150 offices, including 19 in Texas.

Most importantly, according to Rice University political scientist Mark Jones, Bloomberg has already spent $25.6 million for ads in Texas’ top six TV markets and has probably spent $30 million statewide.

“He’s doing pretty much the broadest media buys I’ve ever seen,” Jones said. “He’s hitting open air TV. He’s hitting full-page newspaper ads, which nobody does anymore, but he does. His digital is over the top. And he’s on radio.”

“Most Democratic primary voters have seen those ads and by and large they have been effective,” Jones said. “He has gone from someone who was zero in the polls, who was unknown in Texas aside from being the guy who wanted to ban Super Big Gulps, to someone who is now in the second tier and rising.”

Despite his long public life, Bloomberg is an awkward politician.

“Now if I were in Texas I may say that Donald Trump is scared as a cat at the dog pound, but since I’m from New York, I put it this way: We’re scaring the living hell out of him,” he said. “If I offended anyone, I’m sorry, but I was told at a dinner honoring Ann Richards, language, colorful language, was allowed.”

He said, “We’re staying in Texas not for Super Bowl Tuesday but through November so we can send Donald Trump packing on Election Day,’” and “my friend Beto (O’Rourke) showed that it really is possible if you campaign in every county and every corner of the state, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

He bragged about a recent bus tour of Texas he made with “the most celebrated jurist ever to sit on the bench — Judge Judy. Texas loves Judge Judy. Unlike Senate Republicans, she knows how to deliver the correct verdict.”

’Fractured race’

In Texas, delegates will be allotted proportionally based on a candidate’s statewide tally and performance in each of the 31 state Senate districts. Critically, a candidate needs to meet a 15% threshold to get any delegates statewide or by district.

“Obviously it's a very fractured race, and it's a race for delegates for Sen. Warren. She has some great opportunities in Nevada and in Super Tuesday states,” Julián Castro, who also spoke at the Harris County dinner, said Thursday night.

“I feel hopeful,” said Castro, the former San Antonio mayor and federal Housing and Urban Development secretary, who has been a full-time campaign surrogate for Warren since dropping his own presidential bid at the beginning of January. “She has a very strong organization that's already in place and has been in place for months, unlike most of the other campaigns. I don't think there's a clear front-runner.”

In a memo on the state of the race Tuesday, Roger Lau, Warren’s campaign manager wrote that, “People who are predicting what will happen a week from now are the same people who a year ago predicted that Beto O'Rourke was a frontrunner for the nomination.”

“Barely over a week ago, a fifth-place finish in Iowa was seen likely to knock Amy Klobuchar out of the race, and much of the media and pundit class predicted Pete Buttigieg's fade in the Iowa caucuses,” Lau wrote. “As we've seen in the last week, debates and unexpected results have an outsize impact on the race, and will likely keep it volatile and unpredictable through Super Tuesday.”

“We’ve built an organization to match what we expect to be a drawn-out contest to accumulate delegates everywhere,” Lau said.

Beginning Monday, Buttigieg’s campaign will have 24 paid staffers in Texas to work with its existing grassroots volunteer networks across the state. But so far, his Super Tuesday travel schedule and six-figure digital ad buy do not include Texas.

Klobuchar has a March 1 visit to Austin planned, but there are no details yet.

For Klobuchar and Buttigieg, who is backed by Austin Mayor Steve Adler, it’s a matter of picking up delegates where they can.

“I do think that it is no little thing that in New Hampshire the center-left vote was way more than what Bernie got, and it's more than what Bernie and Warren got together by a considerable amount,” said Matt Angle, director of Lone Star Project, which works to improve Democratic fortunes in Texas. “And if you're looking at Super Tuesday states, particularly Texas, that's where our vote is, our vote is center-left.”

But there is no question that the crowd that Sanders drew to the Mesquite Rodeo is one that only he could draw.

“He's been wanting medical care for all, he's been wanting all of these things like for the whole time, everybody is just following his lead and making slight changes,” said Saffron Maasz, 19, of Arlington, who is studying political science at Tarrant County College and works part-time at UPS. “I think you should go with the original thinker, the O.G. He’s been riding this horse since the ’60s. I think that’s really neat.”

Maasz was there with her boyfriend, Zach Meuir, 23, who works at a Chick-fil-A. He voted for Trump in 2016 “only because I simply didn’t want Hillary. I look back on it now as silly.”

Jason Stringer, 29, who was drawn to libertarian Ron Paul in the past, said when he listened to Sanders, “Everything he said, I kind of already felt, about student debt, health care.”

Stringer, a dog groomer from Mesquite attending his first political rally, voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in 2016.

And this time, if Sanders is not the nominee?

“Honestly, I’m not too sure,” he said.

“We’re kind of hoping it doesn’t come to that,” said his wife, Misty, 37, who manages a college bookstore.

“As far as (Sanders) altogether beating Trump in Texas, I think it’s quite a long shot,” Jason Stringer said.

Monique and Jose Yanez, of Mesquite, both 29, were there with their son, Innocent, 8, and daughter, Serenity, 3.

“I think he’s the only candidate who can actually beat Trump, said Jose, a retail store manager.

Why?

“I don’t think those intimidation tactics Trump does will affect Bernie,” he said. “The only thing he has on him is the socialism stereotype, and I don’t think that’s going to work. There’s nothing new. They’ve been saying that about him from the start.”

Texas and 13 other states hold primaries on March 3. Early voting in Texas runs Tuesday through Feb. 28.

Super Tuesday