Marty Schladen

USA Today Network Austin Bureau

Sensing that they might actually be able to make a difference in a presidential election, El Paso County Democrats are making a special effort to get people who don’t always vote to the polls.

For more than a month, they’ve been using funds donated locally and by the Democratic National Committee to knock on doors, call and send mail to El Paso County residents who have supported them in some – but not all – recent elections.

Early voting begins Monday and the general election is Nov. 8.

The effort in El Paso and other Texas communities comes on heels of television ad buys for Democratic presidential nominee HIllary Clinton and on the heels of two Texas polls that put Clinton within the margin of error of Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Those polls have given El Paso County Democrats the giddy feeling that they might play a role in helping a Democratic presidential candidate win Texas – something that hasn’t happened since Jimmy Carter carried the state in 1976.

“If turnout in El Paso County would start to approach the norm for Democrats, it has the potential to push our candidates over the top,” Hillary for America senior advisor Michael Stratton said during a visit to El Paso on Wednesday.

Potentially making the election there even more dramatic, Stratton said, is that El Paso is in the Mountain Time zone, so in a close election the rest of Texas would watch as the Sun City’s votes are counted.

Not everybody is feeling the euphoria, however.

Republicans have been critical of the methodology of recent polls that have Clinton pulling almost even with Republican nominee, and said Democrats might be setting themselves up for another Texas-sized disappointment.

And one independent analyst said Clinton might already have hit her peak in the Lone Star State.

Voter Guide: Nov. 8, 2016

“Republicans will hear the dinner bell and come home to eat,” said University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus, explaining that he expects Trump to widen his lead over Clinton in the coming weeks.

But Texans for Hillary Chairman Garry Mauro says the pundits are missing something with their skepticism of Democratic strength in traditional Republican strongholds such as Texas, Arizona, Utah and Georgia – demographics.

Those states have relatively fewer white men in their electorates than Iowa and Ohio, traditionally more Democratic states where Trump holds leads.

“He only carries white men,” Mauro said of Trump. “I’m not saying Hillary Clinton can win Texas. I’m saying Donald Trump can lose Texas.”

Aside from the relatively modest $1.5 million Clinton has spent on television in Texas, Mauro said no decisions had been made about whether or where to go on the air next. But he did point out that the former secretary of state ran ads during the primaries in secondary Texas markets such as Wichita Falls.

But Republican political consultant Reb Wayne isn’t buying the notion that the ads run so far are evidence that Clinton thinks she can win Texas.

“In my mind it’s just a ploy for them to continue to suck money (from contributors) out of Texas,” he said. “You throw a little bit of candy in the store window to entice them.”

Mauro said that Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts in Texas cities such Houston, Dallas, Corpus Christi, Laredo and McAllen are mostly locally run and funded.

In El Paso County, the Democratic National Committee contributed between $10,000 and $15,000 for the special get-out-the-vote effort, said County Judge Veronica Escobar, a Democrat. That, along with more than $23,000 in local contributions, has been used to identify supporters who don’t always vote and work to get them to the polls.

Door knockers and phone bankers are telling those people “you can make a difference for the first time in a very long time in a presidential election,” Escobar said.

With Trump’s harsh rhetoric about border walls, immigration and claims that Mexico is sending us its “rapists,” Democratic leaders sense a powerful opportunity to motivate Latino voters who don’t typically turn out in percentages as great as the overall electorate.

“If El Paso does not get out and vote, it will be very sad for us,” Escobar said.

Nationally, it seems there is great determination among Latinos to vote. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo survey of Hispanic voters released earlier this week found that 82 percent of respondents said they were certain to vote and 67 percent said they would vote for Clinton.

But increases in Latino participation might not be due to the efforts of Democrats alone.

El Paso County GOP Chairman Adolpho Telles said that for months Republican volunteers have been conducting a get-out-the-vote operation of their own. That includes knocking on doors and manning phone banks, he said.

“The closing comment in those discussions is always, ‘Please make sure you get out and vote,’” Telles said.

That’s great - no matter who gets Hispanics to vote and no matter who they vote for, said Cesar Blanco, a Democratic state representative from El Paso and interim director of the Latino Victory Project, a national non-partisan group that seeks to increase Hispanic voter participation.

He said a wave of immigrants has applied for citizenship this year so they can vote. Blanco cited government statistics indicating that applications for naturalization were up 32 percent in the third quarter of 2016 compared with the same period a year earlier.

Despite what could be promising signs for Texas Democrats, Wayne, the GOP consultant, said they might be setting themselves up for disappointment like they did in 2014.

That’s when Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis rode a wave of national publicity into a gubernatorial election that she lost by more than 20 percentage points. It was a reminder, analysts said, that Texas was more conservative than Democrats wanted to believe.

Rottinghaus, the political scientist, said the fact that this is a presidential year and the presence of Trump at the top of the ticket mean that Clinton will do better in Texas in 2016 than Davis did in 2014. Even so, he said, Texas Democrats should define success as keeping Trump’s margin within 10 percentage points.

“At the end of the day the Republicans will still rule Texas and I don’t think this election will change that,” he said.

Marty Schladen can be reached at 512-479-6606;mschladen@gannett.com; @martyschladen on Twitter.