Obama works to claim Latino vote

Obama's political strategists say places like Greeley and volunteers like Perez, 64, a bus driver, will play a key role in helping the Illinois senator win the Democratic presidential nomination.

On the surface, that may seem improbable. Greeley -- an isolated meat-packing and farming center on the high plains northeast of Denver -- has long been considered unpromising territory for Democratic presidential hopefuls. And Perez is such a political neophyte that when he tried to organize a march last year, he and four friends were the only ones to show up.

As if those weren't handicaps enough, some polls have shown Obama trailing Clinton among Latinos by a 3-to-1 margin. Many Latino voters have a deep-rooted relationship with the senator from New York and her husband. Clinton advisors are confident that this will serve her well Tuesday in states with large Latino populations, including California, New Mexico, Arizona and New Jersey.

Nonetheless, the Obama campaign has put substantial money and energy behind the idea that newly minted political activists like Perez -- working in places that are not a major focus for the Clinton campaign -- ultimately will yield a rich harvest of delegates.

Their bet: that they can take advantage of elaborate rules for the allocation of delegates. Rather than using a winner-take-all system, Democrats will award delegates to candidates in each Super Tuesday state according to the share of the vote they win.

That means that even in states where Clinton is on track to win the most votes, such as New York and New Jersey, Obama could emerge with a large share of delegates too. And in other states, the Obama camp hopes its strategy will boost it to an outright win in the statewide vote -- or, in the case of Colorado, to a win in the state's nominating caucuses.

That strategy, in turn, has prompted the Obama campaign to look not only at metropolitan centers for votes, but to areas such as Greeley, Tucson and Las Cruces, N.M., where it is making a special effort among Latino voters.

One architect of the strategy is Cuauhtemoc "Temo" Figueroa, national field director for the Obama campaign. Figueroa, who grew up in Spanish-speaking Riverside County neighborhoods, is spending much of his time not in Los Angeles but in Fresno, the Central Valley and the Inland Empire.

He says these areas, which are less of a priority for the Clinton campaign, can yield significant numbers of delegates.

Neither Obama nor Clinton is ignoring urban centers. Clinton will campaign in East Los Angeles today. Obama campaigned Friday in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, N.M.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) appeared at an Obama rally Friday at East Los Angeles Community College, where he invoked his late brother Robert and the family's work with Latino farm workers.

In halting Spanish, which drew cheers, Kennedy said that "a vote for Obama is a vote for the people."

But Obama's effort outside the main population centers is deeper and more aggressive than any in recent memory, some political veterans say. He has a dozen offices scattered across Colorado. In Telluride, a local paper reported, Obama opened the first presidential campaign headquarters since the town was founded during the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, in 1878.

"We have never seen this before," said David Delgado, a Greeley native and chairman of the Weld County Democratic Party. "I think it could be effective, because they are showing attention to a place that doesn't usually get it."

Still, the Clintons can boast of long roots and formidable friends in the Latino community. One of Hillary Clinton's key surrogates is union icon Dolores Huerta, who led the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez. She has been traveling to heavily Latino regions of states that will vote Tuesday.

When Huerta led a rally last week in Pueblo, Colo. -- at the Dolores Huerta Preparatory High School, down the street from Cesar Chavez Academy -- the value of her endorsement was clear. One Clinton supporter showed up with a picture of himself and Chavez.

Another Clinton backer, steelworker Louis Vigil Jr., recalled meeting the senator in 1992, when she came to Pueblo to campaign for her husband. Asked how Sen. Clinton had developed such a close tie with his community, Vigil quickly replied: "It's Bill."

"Sen. Obama is trying to develop a relationship with our community," Huerta said, "but he's just not there yet."