Presidential candidate Kamala Harris plans to court delegates in Texas, stepping on the turf of fellow Democratic hopeful Beto O'Rourke. | Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo 2020 Elections Kamala puts Beto on notice The California Democrat is making a concerted play for delegates in O'Rourke's home state of Texas, starting with a visit this weekend.

Kamala is coming after Beto — in his own backyard.

Hours before the former El Paso congressman unveiled his presidential bid, Harris announced she was heading to Texas — an unmistakable warning shot at a fellow upstart competing to capture the imagination of Democratic voters.


She’ll meet Friday outside Dallas with Tarrant County Democrats, then it’s on to Houston Saturday for a big rally at Texas Southern University in Houston. It’s the start of a sustained, delegate-focused strategy that aims to take advantage of the front-loaded primary calendar in which Texas and California will significantly shape the race on March 3.

Harris has already reached out to Congressional Black Caucus members from Texas, including Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson, Sheila Jackson Lee, Al Green, Colin Allred and Marc Veasey, according to a Democrat familiar with the calls.

The aggressive maneuvering is the surest sign yet that for all of O’Rourke’s appeal at home — owing to his tantalizingly close loss to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz last fall — Harris isn’t ceding Texas to O’Rourke or his fellow Texan Julián Castro, the former Obama-era Housing and Urban Development secretary from San Antonio. If anything, it’s the opposite: She wants to make clear that she’s willing to go toe-to-toe with O’Rourke, the charismatic Gen-Xer who starts the race with more money and a similar knack for drawing media and exciting audiences.

"There is no state in America we will cede to anyone," a senior Harris campaign official told POLITICO. "We see a lot of opportunity to deepen support with African American and Latino communities and to expand into suburban areas where Democrats are resurgent."

COUNTDOWN TO 2020 The race for 2020 starts now. Stay in the know. Follow our presidential election coverage. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Harris and her team think they can win a significant share of Texas delegates by focusing on the Houston and Dallas areas. They pointed to Harris' advocacy for Dreamers in the Senate as an advantage with Latino voters and noted that she will hold her first campaign rally in Texas at one of the nation's largest historically black colleges, a choice reflecting her priorities as a candidate.

More than half of the delegates up for grabs in the Democratic nomination contest will be decided by Super Tuesday states. That makes Texas a must stop for serious contenders. At the same time, like California, the sheer size of the state requires major resources and a creative approach to compete.

“There’s a certain type of cruelty involved in having both Texas and California on the same day because they both are large, populous, diverse states with more than a dozen media markets that are quite frankly hard to get around,” said Colin Strother, a veteran Texas Democratic strategist. “Candidates have to start this process early to have any chance of success.”

Finding top campaign talent in the GOP-dominated state isn’t a given, but Harris’ campaign is well situated on that front. Ace Smith, a Harris senior strategist, ran Hillary Clinton’s campaigns in Texas and California in 2008. Senior strategist Emmy Ruiz, who served as Clinton’s state director in Nevada and Colorado in 2016, is from Texas, where she ran the field program for the Democratic National Committee from 2009 to 2011, and worked for Annie's List, which helps elect pro-choice women in Texas. And Harris’ communications director, Lily Adams, is a granddaughter of former Texas Gov. Ann Richards.

Shelby Cole, a key player in O’Rourke’s record-breaking Senate fundraising effort and a Houston native, moved to Authentic Campaigns, where she is the digital fundraising director for Harris' presidential campaign. And Jose Nunez, Harris' online organizing director, is from San Antonio, and worked for former Rep. Leticia Van de Putte of Texas.

Asked about rivals starting to campaign in Texas — and about his own hold on the state — O’Rourke said Tuesday, “I take no one for granted, and that includes the people of Texas.”

“Every one of them deserves to be able to see every Democratic candidate for the nomination, to listen to us all, myself included,” O’Rourke told reporters after rallying several hundred students at Penn State University. “Texas is going to be central to our strategy. But this is going to be a true national campaign for everyone everywhere, and that’s got to include Texas.”

When a student asked O’Rourke during the event about “a lot of really qualified female candidates running this year” and what he would do to “empower women in Congress,” O’Rourke responded, “One hundred percent agree — count myself lucky to be in this field, remind myself constantly that come summer of 2020, we are all going to be on the same team behind the same nominee. And whoever she or he happens to be, we want them to be successful in the November election against Donald Trump.”

O’Rourke, after his Senate race, has a huge edge starting out: A University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll last year put his favorability among Democrats at 93 percent.

But Democrats in the expansive state will have plenty of alternatives in the presidential race. In 2008, Texas Democrats divided so sharply between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that the former won the state’s caucuses and the latter its primary. O’Rourke in 2020 will be contending not only with a large field of candidates from out of state, but also Castro, who could draw home-state support.

Strother put the feeling among Texans in universal terms: “We’re the best at everything, just ask us,” he said. “Our music is the best. Our food is the best. Our women are the prettiest, and beer even tastes better this side of the Red River.

“Texans,” he added, “are going to stick with a Texan — to a large degree.”

Yet he and other Democrats in the state still see an opening for non-Texans to win a significant share of the state’s 228 pledged delegates, particular for a candidate with Harris' profile. He said she can appeal to African American and Latino voters, attract media attention across the state and highlight her career in law enforcement in a part of the country where law-and-order candidates run strong.

“She gives a heck of a speech. She’s inspiring. She has an interesting story,” Strother said. “The fact she’s put some bad people behind bars is not going to cut against her here. We want bad people behind bars. I think she’ll do well. She’ll get a lot of support.”

Strategist Harold Cook, former executive director of the Democratic Party of Texas, compares the tactic of camping out in key areas to “duck hunting 101." "If you’re competing in a big state with proportional vote, you don’t need to get the most ducks to get a whole bunch of ducks."

Of Texas’ 228 pledged delegates, 149 will be allocated to Texas' 31 state Senate districts — a difference from most other states that distribute their delegates by congressional district. Those districts have been packed with Democrats to allow Republicans to control more legislative seats, thereby decreasing the number of truly blue districts.

But with neighboring seats covering the suburbs turning away from Republicans, Democrats will have a chance to campaign in more places that hug the borders of Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, said Texas Democratic strategist Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project.

The remaining 79 delegates are statewide, and candidates will need to meet a 15 percent threshold to secure them both statewide and at the district level.

To give a sense of the scale, O’Rourke’s former 16th congressional district includes just one state Senate district. In 2016, Clinton won three of its four delegates, with Bernie Sanders taking one.

With a crowded 2020 field, Angle said Democrats can’t appeal to only one part of the state — or one constituency.

“It’s really easy to overlook the African American vote in Texas, and that’s a big mistake,” he said, noting the black population has grown at about five times the rate of whites.

The hometown candidates could be a blessing for others, too. Castro’s run brings added attention to the Latino population, which is growing at an even faster rate than the black population — from El Paso to San Antonio to Corpus Christi, but also in Houston. O’Rourke, meanwhile, demonstrated in his Senate campaign that there’s a strong appetite for change in places where Democrats had lost faith and barely organized in years, said Henry R. Muñoz III, a Texas Democratic leader, philanthropist and major donor.

“People in Texas are enjoying the fact that all of these candidates are calling, that they are coming to the state; that they are taking the voice of the people of Texas very seriously,” said Muñoz, co-founder of the Latino Victory Project and DNC national finance chair. “Certainly, the ‘Beto factor’ plays a role in that, but I think when you look at the diversity of Texas, and you look at the diversity of the candidates who are running for the Democratic nomination in 2020, there’s a great match-up.

“So,” Muñoz added, “people are looking forward to Kamala coming to Texas.”

