It starts at the San Francisco International Airport, where I overhear two locals talking about which precincts need to be covered. “South Texas is Hillary country,” one man says, “so they’ll definitely be needing us down there.” On the plane, the woman next to me, from Marin, is reading The Audacity of Hope. She and a friend are traveling “to campaign for Obama!” she exclaims, as if she’s on her way to a Rolling Stones concert. From across the aisle, yet another San Franciscan pipes in. “He’s speaking at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater tonight. A group of us from the Bay Area are going.”
I knew I would find some locals campaigning for the Bay Area’s favorite Democratic nominee in Texas, but I thought I’d have to look a little harder to find them. Even at Obama’s headquarters, my first stop the next morning, the woman whom I ask for directions to the volunteer training center is from Napa. “I think it’s that way,” she tells me, “but I’m not exactly sure.” Besides my hotel concierge, I haven’t met a Texan yet.
I guess it’s no surprise that Bay Area residents are taking a weekend out for democracy—20 of them in San Antonio alone—but let’s be real here: What kind of impact can a bunch of political activists from Gay Marriage–and–Organic French Cheese Country have in Dubya’s Remember-the-Alamo state? That night, I join the three hippest, savviest Bay Area Obama campaigners I can find as they hit the San Antonio River Walk to “do some nightlife campaigning”: Julian Davis, 29, the director of a Tenderloin nonprofit; Tom Wrobel, 38, an attorney; and Cat Rauschuber, 31, who works on local public policy. In honor of their leader, they’ve taken to calling themselves Juliobama, Tombama, and Catbama. In short, it’s a cult.
As we struggle with massive plates of BBQ ribs, the Bamathree (my own moniker) claim to have swayed plenty of Texas voters and swear they haven’t been shunned for coming from San Francisco. “Even the Republicans are grateful that we’ve come all this way to visit them,” says Juliobama, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Then I do. We run into a group of mostly blond Republican women who give us the “I see your Obama button; you don’t need to talk to me” line, but one of them breaks off and whispers to Tombama, “I’m voting for him.” “And you’re going to caucus?” Tombama prods. “Well, we’ll see,” she whispers. “Just don’t tell my friends.” But I’ve yet to see a conversion, and I still doubt I will.
Around 11 p.m., we end up at Durty Nelly’s Irish Pub. The tough, bald bouncer says he’s undecided. He thinks Hillary has more experience and has heard that “the Obamas aren’t proud to be Americans.” His friend says he heard that Obama used to be a Muslim; another says he heard Obama hates white people. Tombama breaks in with “You can’t believe that spin,” and explains that Obama is a Christian and has more experience (eight years in the Illinois Senate and three in the U.S. Senate, to Hillary’s seven in the U.S. Senate). The boys seem unmoved. A couple of army guys at the bar aren’t buying the Obama pitch either. In fact, they don’t even plan to vote. “We’ll follow our commander-in-chief, no matter who he or she is,” they say.
I decide to bum a cigarette from the bouncer, and while we chat, a bubbly Hillary supporter joins our conversation. She brings up the experience-versus-charisma argument, to which the bouncer now replies, “Oh, come on. That’s just not true.” “So, you’re voting Obama now?” I ask. He shrugs his shoulders and says coolly, “Yeah, you know, probably.” (Thumbs-up for Bay Area moxie.)
A few nights later, on March 4, Obama appears to have lost the Texas primary by several percentage points, meaning Clinton has broken his 11–0 momentum in state wins. But on March 5, the Obama campaign announces a “delegate victory,” claiming its candidate will net more delegates when the caucus results are released in June.
I call Juliobama to see if he thinks that the Bay Area contingent helped. “Yeah, we did,” he says enthusiastically. “We came. We had a blast. And we’re going to keep going until the convention.”