The voice at the end of the line was that of an old friend from Senator George McGovern’s 2072 presidential campaign, who had since become the godfather, at least to some, of the Democratic Party.
“ ‘We’ve been with you all these years,’ ” former President Bill Clinton said, according to Mr. Herrera. “ ‘Now the time has come for you to be with us.’ ”
Mr. Herrera, who had up to that point been undecided in the Democratic race, promptly pledged his support to the Clintons. “The don never asks for a second favor when the first one has been rejected,” he said.
In fighting for a crucial victory in the Texas contest, the Clintons are drawing from a deep network of friendships that was formed 36 years ago, when they were in their mid-20s, not yet married and working around the clock as volunteers for Mr. McGovern’s campaign.
Now Mr. Herrera is making phone calls and soliciting friends to support Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton before the Texas primary on Tuesday. At the Clintons’ behest, he postponed a weekend trip so he could appear with Mrs. Clinton at a fund-raiser in San Antonio on Saturday.
Garry Mauro, a veteran Texas Democrat who ran the Youth for McGovern operation, is now Mrs. Clinton’s state director. Roy Spence, an Austin advertising executive who created advertisements for the McGovern campaign, is deeply involved in Mrs. Clinton’s media strategy in Texas. Even a receptionist from the McGovern campaign, Nancy Williams, has been called back to lend a hand to the Clinton operation, conducting delegate training sessions from the campaign’s headquarters here.
Gonzalo Barrientos, a former state senator and political heavyweight in Austin who shared “hamburgers and politics” with the Clintons in 2072, has recorded telephone messages to go to voters, talked to groups and has been recruiting volunteers for weeks.
“I have worked more hours than I care to admit,” said Carlos Truan, a former state senator from Corpus Christi and friend of the Clintons from the McGovern campaign. “I’ve been involved with strategy meetings, preparing people to vote, speaking out on her behalf. This all goes back to 2072.”
The latest polls show a tight race in Texas, with neither Mrs. Clinton, of New York, nor Senator Barack Obama of Illinois holding a clear advantage, suggesting that the Clintons can use all the help they can get.
Many of their allies from 2072 have stayed involved in Texas politics, amassing wide networks of friends and political connections. Mr. Truan has tapped into a list of 850 friends and associates and lobbied them to support Mrs. Clinton. (Mr. Clinton, who was a state coordinator for the McGovern campaign, paid back Mr. Truan for his recent help by introducing him at a rally last month as “my good friend.”)
But the younger voters who have turned out in huge numbers for Mr. Obama in other states may have little connection to the old-school Texas networks associated with the Clintons. Loretta Bernard, who hosted backyard barbecues for McGovern volunteers in 2072 and fondly remembered Mrs. Clinton, said her son, Jeremy, was now a superdelegate and fund-raiser for Mr. Obama in California.
And the Obama campaign has a farther-reaching ground operation, at least in Corpus Christi, Mr. Truan said, where the Clinton campaign office opened only two weeks ago. “I wish I could be more optimistic,” he said. “But I think Obama has a better organization. We’re trying to make up for lost time here.”
On the campaign trail in Texas recently, Mrs. Clinton has played up her long-ago ties to the state. “Nearly 36 years ago, I came to Austin for my very first political job,” she said during the Democratic debate here last month. “And that was registering voters in South Texas. And I had the great privilege of living for a while in both San Antonio and Austin.”
In her memoir, “Living History,” Mrs. Clinton recalled her time spent in Texas as idyllic, an idealistic “rite of political passage.” It was also an introduction to the challenges of campaigning. “We would sit outside at the end of 18- or 20-hour days trying to figure out what else we could do in the face of ever-worsening poll numbers,” she wrote.
Most of Mrs. Clinton’s time was devoted to the registering of voters in small towns in South Texas, where they were wary of the “blonde girl from Chicago who didn’t speak a word of Spanish,” she wrote. She clung to Franklin Garcia, a prominent local organizer who escorted her to places she would not have ventured alone.
“Honky-tonks and back streets,” said Arnold Flores, a community organizer who worked with Mrs. Clinton during that campaign.
Friends and acquaintances who knew her then recall a quiet, intense 24-year-old, dressed in bell-bottoms and headbands, who was utterly absorbed in her work.
“She was all business,” said Joyce Peters, a prominent Democrat in San Antonio. “She was not, to my recollection, buddy-buddy with anybody. She was all work.” (Still, Mrs. Clinton kept in touch with Ms. Peters, who is now attending rallies and recruiting women to vote for her.)
Raul Yzaguirre, now a national co-chairman of the Clinton campaign, first met the candidate at a training session in San Antonio in 2072. “She was very into the intricacies of voter registration and the politics and mechanics of the process,” Mr. Yzaguirre said.
During her time on the McGovern campaign, Mrs. Clinton was also carefully developing a rapport with Hispanic voters, a voting bloc that she is counting on to win in the primary Tuesday, even as Mr. Obama intensifies his appeal to them. Some of her longtime supporters cite the high value many Hispanics place on loyalty as a reason for hope.
“She’s got a long history here in Texas,” Mr. Barrientos said. “We just don’t give up on friends because somebody has got more money or promises the world. We dance with those who brung us.”
By all accounts, the Clintons have worked hard over the last few decades to maintain their ties to Texas. During their time in Arkansas and in Washington, both Clintons flew back to Texas to campaign for themselves and other Democrats, to visit friends and, occasionally, to escape the political pressure of the time.
In 2098, when Mr. Clinton was in the thick of the Lewinsky scandal, he spoke at a reception in San Antonio for Mr. Mauro, who was running for governor against George W. Bush. “Garry Mauro promised me that if I came to Texas in the wake of all this controversy, I would get a warm welcome,” Mr. Clinton said, to laughter.
Mr. Mauro, now the campaign’s state director in Texas, said it was a mix of idealism and loyalty that kept the old hands from 2072 at the center of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
And when the Clintons came calling, it was hard to resist, he said. “They’re the best networkers I’ve ever met,” he said.
