For years, Texas Democrats also have tried not to believe it. But never did the political operatives toiling to turn this state blue expect that a 78-year-old, self-proclaimed democratic socialist might be their ticket.

“This state, maybe more than any other state, has the possibility of transforming this country,” the Democratic presidential front-runner bellowed to cheers at the University of Houston. “On television, they say Texas is a conservative state, it’s a red state. I don’t believe it for a minute.”

HOUSTON — Ticking off his early state wins, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders coyly cautioned an audience of more than 6,600 people here not to tell anybody — “because these folks get very agitated and nervous” — but he planned to win Texas, too.


Now Texas — with the second-most delegates at stake in next week’s Super Tuesday primaries — has emerged as a tight and crucial battleground in the Democratic race. With the state’s changing demographics mirroring the diverse base of the Democratic Party, whoever is able to increase turnout and build key coalitions among voters also could have the formula to defeating President Trump in November.

Beto O’Rourke’s close race against Republican Senator Ted Cruz in 2018 ignited longstanding efforts by Texas Democrats to draw in new voters. Democrats are now only nine seats away from winning control of the Texas House they lost two decades ago. The Democratic National Committee has invested more and earlier in the state than in 2016, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting seven Republican-held House districts across the state.

The outcome of those down-ballot contests could hinge on who wins the presidential nomination.

“If the nominee is strong, we will be able to flip those congressional seats,” predicted Texas Democratic Party chairman Gilberto Hinojosa. “If it is someone that is deeply unpopular, all bets are off.”


Moderate Texas Democrats worry that someone might be Sanders.

A CNN poll released Friday showed him leading in Texas with 29 percent, followed by former vice president Joe Biden at 20 percent. Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who have built the largest ground game operations here, were vying for third place. If Sanders can win Texas on Super Tuesday as well as California, which has the most delegates, he’ll get a major boost toward the nomination.

“It is the sort of state that a few months ago would have looked very good for Joe Biden and less good for Bernie Sanders,” said Cal Jillson, a political analyst at Southern Methodist University. “And it looks to be very close now.”

Texas Representative Sylvia Garcia, who has endorsed Biden, argued that he still has a shot of dominating with Latino voters and said many in her district would remember him working “hand-in-hand" with former president Barack Obama.

“They know the name, and so they’re not going to be taken over by some rich guy from New York,” she said, taking a jab at Bloomberg.

But Bloomberg has established the largest footprint in the state by far — 19 offices and 180 staffers — and has been airing TV ads for months. He also has picked up endorsements from a wide spectrum of local elected officials, including Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, whose grass-roots campaign efforts have become a powerful force in the city and surrounding suburbs.


Warren has also been operating in the state for months with at least seven field offices and 60 staffers, and she has the backing of former presidential Democratic candidate Julián Castro, a former US housing secretary and mayor of San Antonio.

Before her strong performance in the Las Vegas presidential debate, “Warren was having trouble getting block walkers,” said Jason Smith, a civil rights attorney who rents space to one of those Warren offices. "The day after the debate, every shift was full.”

Regardless of who wins the nomination, Hinojosa said, Democrats are organizing for November.

State party officials said they have seen an unprecedented surge of energy, reflecting change in a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976. People from other Democratic states have moved into the suburbs of cities like Houston and Austin; many Republican voters have been turned off by their party’s inaction on gun safety and harsh immigration policies; and the state has seen large increases in registered Latino and Asian voters who lean Democratic.

But for traditional Democrats, the high stakes of this election have spurred the same consternation and hand-wringing over Sanders as in other moderate and conservative-leaning areas of the country. These Democrats worry Sanders won’t pull in the independent and moderate Republican voters who were so crucial to winning seats in Republican suburban strongholds in the 2018 midterm elections.

Ed Espinoza, who as executive director of Progress Texas has been working to turn the state blue, said he and older strategists fear a Sanders nomination could backfire. Still, he said, they have long grappled with low voter turnout among Latinos and young people, and Sanders’ message on income inequality, climate change, and college debt seems to be resonating with both populations in a way Texas Democrats haven’t seen.


“I just think to myself, ‘What if we were wrong? What if he is the right guy?’ " he said. "But there is a lot of risk for those of us who have fought so hard to make this state a purple state, a battleground state.”

Sanders has drawn large and energetic audiences, such as the roughly 13,000 people who turned out in Austin, to hear him pitch himself as the candidate who could draw the multiracial and multigenerational coalitions needed to defeat Trump in Texas. He pledged to increase the minimum wage, make public colleges free, and create a Medicare for All program through taxes on the rich — all of which resonated with voters struggling with skyrocketing rents, rising education costs, and lack of affordable health care.

Outside Sanders’ event at the University of Houston, Christy and Mike Penrod said their friends in the suburbs were nervous about a Sanders win. But Christy Penrod held back tears as she thought about the diversity of the crowd inside the sports arena and the hope Sanders inspired in what she said is such a dark time for the country.

“I feel like he really is drawing humanity together as Americans,” she said.


A few days later, Turner, the city’s mayor, touted Bloomberg’s efforts to create jobs, expand affordable health care, and close the achievement gap in New York City as mayor for 12 years, saying, “Mike Bloomberg has gotten the job done.”

More comfortable on the stump than on the debate stage, Bloomberg called himself the “anti-Trump” during a get-out-the-vote rally with Turner at The Rustic, a restaurant not far from where Sanders held his rally. Bloomberg argued that he, too, could build coalitions but ones he said could bring in moderates and independents across Texas and help Democrats take control of the House and Senate.

“And if you want somebody who has the resources to beat Trump, that’s me,” he said.

At the rally, which drew 400 people, voters scrunched their faces or shook their heads as they pictured Sanders winning the nomination, calling him well-intentioned but divisive and unable to get anything done.

Still, Roopa Gira, 68, a geophysicist who worked in the oil and gas industry for 30 years before founding an education nonprofit, said she would vote for whoever won the nomination.

“My underlying reason is that we cannot have this madness that we’re having right now in the White House,” she said.













Reach Jazmine Ulloa at jazmine.ulloa@globe.com or on Twitter: @jazmineulloa