There was an all-hands-on-deck feeling in the air at Fred Rangel’s campaign headquarters.

It was Monday afternoon, the first day of early voting in the special-election runoff for Texas House District 125 (the legislative seat that Justin Rodriguez vacated two months ago). Rangel, decked out in his trusty felt cowboy hat, rallied the troops at his Leon Valley command post while volunteers acted like they were ready to make history.

Rangel is trying to become the first Republican to win District 125, a House seat that for local Democrats has been more reliable than a wide-open Steph Curry jump shot.

Part of the energy in the room Monday came from reinforcements who had come to San Antonio from other parts of the state: volunteers with the Texas arm of the Latinos for Trump movement.

Latinos for Trump started four years ago as a contrarian whim from Marco Gutierrez, a Californian determined to prove that at least some Hispanics found something agreeable about the 2016 presidential candidacy of Donald Trump.

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Gutierrez, a native of Mexico who embraced Trump’s calls for a wall across this country’s southern border, was so at odds with the political consensus of his community that even his brother stopped talking to him.

Gutierrez shares some of Trump’s flair for provocation, as demonstrated by his 2016 warning that a Trump defeat would mean “taco trucks on every corner” in America. (A prospect that seemed infinitely more appealing to me than the “chicken for every pot” promised by Herbert Hoover’s GOP backers in 1928.)

Since Trump’s unlikely election, Latinos for Trump has morphed from a loose movement into something resembling a real organization, with both national and Texas state political action committees.

The group also is trying to demonstrate that it can mobilize an army of conservative Latino volunteers in selected races. Rangel’s runoff is an early demonstration of what the organization hopes to do on a bigger scale in 2020.

District 125, which runs from the Southwest up to the Northwest Side of Bexar County, is 72 percent Latino, according to U.S. Census numbers. Rangel’s hopes of victory against former Councilman Ray Lopez depend on convincing a larger-than-usual share of Latinos to vote Republican.

About 40 Latinos for Trump volunteers joined the Rangel cause Monday, alternately block-walking, phone banking and visiting polling sites.

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The most prominent of those volunteers was Bianca Gracia, the national vice-president of Latinos for Trump, who came in from the Houston area.

Latinos for Trump has a committee that vets candidates for possible endorsements and Gracia said the organization decided to help Rangel because of his vehement anti-abortion stance.

“He wasn’t just a pro-lifer,” she said. “He was a staunch pro-lifer.”

During a speech to the troops at Rangel’s headquarters Monday, Gracia explained, “We are all about candidates who are pro-God, pro-family and pro-life.”

During an earlier live stream from a local polling site, Gracia praised Rangel as someone who will “save the babies.”

Both Rangel and Gracia say they’re consistently hearing concerns from voters on the abortion issue, a development that they connect to recently passed laws in New York and Virginia, which loosened restrictions on third-trimester abortions in cases where the health of the mother is at risk.

Gracia’s loyalty to Trump is so intense that she recently scolded Gov. Greg Abbott, one of the president’s most reliable cheerleaders, for not doing enough to back Trump’s border policies.

Gracia sat in the front row at a Jan. 25 Fox News “Battle at the Border” town hall (which actually was held at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort, more than 150 miles from the Mexican border). During the televised forum, she asked Abbott why he hasn’t “taken a stronger stance vocally supporting our president.”

Rangel’s own views on Trump are a little cloudier.

When asked how closely he wants to align his own campaign with his party’s standard-bearer, Rangel suggested that his big task with District 125 voters has been to shift their focus away from the federal government.

“Certainly, federal issues are not state issues,” Rangel said. “My emphasis has been to inform the constituent that these are not state issues, these are federal issues, when they ask the questions.”

Rangel’s gratitude to Latinos for Trump has been evident. He noted during Monday’s “MAGA Rally” that his campaign has “more volunteers from outside the district than inside the district.”

But Rangel is quick to emphasize that those volunteers are here to help him, not to spread the gospel of Trumpism.

“It hasn’t been about promoting Trump or not promoting Trump,” he said. “It’s about promoting my campaign.”

If Latinos for Trump get their way, they’ll do both at the same time.

Gilbert Garcia is a columnist covering the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | ggarcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @gilgamesh470