Editor's note: In 2007, former Dallas Morning News senior political writer Wayne Slater spoke with then first-time presidential candidate Hillary Clinton about her time working on the late George McGovern's 1972 bid for the White House. Clinton talked with Slater about campaigning in Texas, where she spent time in Austin and the Rio Grande Valley. Read Slater's story and listen to his interview below.
She was dispatched by the Democratic Party to register voters in the Rio Grande Valley, where she didn't speak the language.
He was picked to run the Texas campaign of George McGovern, who didn't have a chance.
"The political outcome wasn't very good," Mrs. Clinton recalled in a recent interview.
But the experience, she said, was invaluable, and it shapes her own presidential bid to this day. Among the lessons she cited: How to form personal connections with voters. The importance of recognizing the culture of a place when asking for votes. And the logistical nightmare that a White House campaign can entail.
"I saw in an up-close way what goes into a presidential campaign, and I feel like those lessons are ones I took with me," she said.
In the summer and fall of 1972, Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham were a pair of 20-something law students, he with bushy hair and cowboy boots, she with oval glasses and a penchant for brown corduroy.
They were new to national politics. Texas was their training ground.
"I had never spent time in Texas before, so everything from South Texas and crossing the border to eat goat to hanging out in the Hill Country" was new, Mrs. Clinton said.
The McGovern campaign operated out of a brick storefront on West Sixth Street in Austin. When the young staffers weren't at the headquarters, they were at Scholz Beer Garten, a favorite after-work spot for the city's political progressives, and the Armadillo World Headquarters, a music hall that famously catered to both rednecks and hippies.
"A lot of serious campaign decisions were made at Scholz's," Mrs. Clinton said. "And we occasionally got to blow off some steam and go to the Armadillo. I remember seeing Jerry Lee Lewis there, which was one of the highlights of my time in Austin."
Sen. Lloyd Bentsen declined to be Mr. McGovern's campaign chairman. Gubernatorial nominee Dolph Briscoe wouldn't appear in public with the candidate. Former Gov. John Connally was leading a group called Democrats for Nixon.
"We knew we were going to lose, but we didn't talk about that," said former Land Commissioner Bob Armstrong, one of the few statewide officeholders who did support Mr. McGovern. "At the time, I thought I was committing political suicide."
Gone to Texas
Garry Mauro, then a 22-year-old University of Texas law student experienced at campus voter drives, recalls the Clintons' baptism that year in the slaughterhouse politics of the Lone Star State.
"This woman named Hillary Rodham calls and says, "The [Democratic National Committee] is sending me down here. I'm supposed to coordinate all voter-registration efforts and get-out-the-vote efforts. Can we meet?'"
A couple of weeks later, she introduced him to two friends from Yale Law School dispatched by the McGovern campaign to run the Texas operation, Bill Clinton and a mustachioed anti-war organizer named Taylor Branch.
Mr. Clinton's job was to coordinate the campaign's disparate alliances - Austin liberals, South Texas Hispanics, black voters in the cities - and to cultivate the state's sparse network of sympathetic Democratic moneymen.
On occasion, former President Lyndon Johnson would call Mr. Clinton at the campaign office, looking for the latest news and offering advice.
Mrs. Clinton was mostly on the road encouraging voter registration, usually riding shotgun in Mr. Mauro's two-door Ford Fairlane.
Mrs. Clinton laughs now at the memory of long days driving to the farthest precincts of Alice and Donna and Edinburg.
In her memoir, she recalls the beer, the cabrito (barbecued goat) and the mariachi band. Mr. Clinton, in his own book, remembers something else - "a halfhearted stripper."
The details are lost to history. Asked about the evening, Mrs. Clinton burst into a loud, full-throated laugh. "All I can say, I'm certainly glad I wasn't well known in those days," she said.
Difficult campaign
Vice presidential pick Tom Eagleton of Missouri withdrew abruptly after it was revealed he had twice received electric shock treatment, and his replacement, Sargent Shriver, rattled the troops. Mr. Clinton spent inordinate time dealing with squabbling Democratic officials, volunteers and campaign workers. Campaign events ran notoriously late.
"I saw how difficult it was to run a national campaign," said Mrs. Clinton, who was responsible for a rally at the Alamo with Mr. Shriver near the campaign's end.
"There was a point within a month of the campaign when [Mr. McGovern's wife, Eleanor] came to Austin and her people were trying to figure out what to do with her - in a sense, how are you going to get a crowd for this woman," Ms. Weddington said.
Mr. Armstrong would become an assistant interior secretary under Mr. Clinton. Mr. Mauro would be elected land commissioner and later lose a governor's race to George W. Bush.
And, of course, Mr. Clinton and Ms. Rodham would marry and settle in Arkansas.
Mr. McGovern lost Texas, 67 percent to 33 percent.
But around the headquarters that year was a sense that there was more to come. Mr. Armstrong recalls how a friend, who had dubbed Mr. Clinton "The Kid," would say, "The Kid is going to be president some day."