Rick Treviño was not supposed to make it this far in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Texas’s 23rd Congressional District.

A former public school teacher and a Bernie Sanders presidential delegate, he quit his job last September to campaign full-time, though few thought his race would get off the ground. In a five-candidate race, he pledged not to take any corporate PAC or lobbyist money. In fact, he didn’t take much of any money. He spent just $20,416.

Jay Hulings, a Democratic candidate backed by the Blue Dog Coalition and the Castro brothers — the prominent San Antonio Democrats who have acted as kingmakers in local political races — spent almost $400,000 and ended up with 6,584 votes. Treviño netted 7,642 votes, making it to second place and earning a spot in the May 22 runoff.

The candidate who came in first place, former Air Force intelligence officer Gina Ortiz Jones, spent a similar sum to Hulings and ended up with 18,074 votes.

That means that Treviño spent around $2.64 a vote, a tenth of what Ortiz Jones put in, at $20.75 per vote. (The hapless Hulings was shaken down by consultants at a rate of $59.83 per vote.)

The San Antonio Express-News marveled at the strength of Treviño’s grassroots campaign and the number of votes he was able to pull in based on organizing alone, calling it “one of the great underdog stories of Tuesday’s Texas primary.”

“I just focused on the 30,000 or so people who voted for Bernie [in 2016] and targeted them,” he explained in an interview with The Intercept. “We just created a mail list of 3,000 people and mailed them about three times.”

On the hustings, he aimed for neighborhoods that his opponents ignored. “I just looked at places where I knew my opponents were not canvassing: working-class communities,” he said.

Amusingly, he also capitalized on his name. It turned out there were other people with the same last name running for other offices in other parts of the district. So he made sure to campaign in the same places, in sort of a Treviño synergy campaign.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced at the end of March that it has endorsed Ortiz Jones, naming her as part of its Red to Blue campaign. But Treviño isn’t sad about the DCCC’s endorsement. In fact, he’s enthusiastic, saying it will “definitely” give him a boost.

“The DCCC has an incredibly terrible track record in CD-23, and it’s great to know that they’re going to have all their hands all over Gina’s race,” he told The Intercept.

“I hope they send the same folks who have worked the district in the past,” he added, noting that the DCCC had “led Gallego to two consecutive losses,” referring to former candidate Pete Gallego, who declined to take a third crack at the seat this cycle.