Clinton's California Dream Team

He traveled to Iowa five times, spent a week in New Hampshire and flew regularly to campaign events in Nevada. As the California primary was approaching and Obama was closing the gap, he worked to rally Latino support and to sway other elected officials to endorse Clinton. Sometimes, he had to remind people: I'm also running Los Angeles.

Villaraigosa sometimes thinks of life as a mathematical equation that measures how much he can accomplish each day, and the calculation betrayed him one day last week. He rose at 5 a.m., rode to Oakland, flown to San Francisco, stopped by Sacramento and then flew back to Los Angeles. After about 700 miles and five or six speeches on Clinton's behalf, he still had one more address to deliver. Then he planned to rush home to cook broccoli and chicken for his 14-year-old daughter, whom he sees only occasionally because of a recent divorce.

As Villaraigosa rushed into a small office building for the day's final event, he passed through the adoring crowed with a flurry of handshakes and half-hugs before making his way to the center of the room, in front of about 75 people. During a halting five-minute speech, his dramatic pauses between words sometimes extended into chasms, leaving the audience to wonder whether he had lost his train of thought.

"You've heard what I have to say," he said. "This is the most important election of my lifetime. Is there anything else? . . . Hillary Clinton needs us. . . . We need her."

And with that, Villaraigosa bolted out of the room, head down, and speed-walked to the awaiting GMC Yukon. If he could just maximize the rest of the night, Villaraigosa could squeeze in dinner and still get a few hours of sleep before waking up to campaign again. And if sleep eluded him? "I'm rarely wanting for energy," he said, "and this is no time for rest."

'You Can Control This Election'

Huerta traveled in her son's 1996 Ford Taurus rather than in a Yukon, and she had left Bakersfield to come to Los Angeles, to a Mexican restaurant in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, so she could make a crucial presentation in front of 25 powerful Latino leaders -- a group called the Federation of Mexican Organizations. In one evening, she could make her pitch to grass-roots leaders hailing from all of Mexico's states and possibly unite the city's Latino community behind Clinton.

Huerta walked into the building, a converted Chinese restaurant on the border of Koreatown, and took her seat at a large table tucked into the back corner beneath a statue of the Virgin Mary. Each Latino leader stood to make a brief introduction. Many of them didn't speak English; some had entered the country illegally and are not allowed to vote.

"Some might say you are not important," Huerta told them in Spanish. "But I know you are the most important leaders in Los Angeles. You can control this election."

As marimba music echoed across the restaurant and many of the leaders sipped a sugary drink called tamarindo, Huerta told stories for more than 20 minutes about her devotion to Clinton. She recounted eight weeks spent campaigning for Clinton in Nevada, where some Latinos felt so unfamiliar with Obama that they asked Huerta, "Como se llama?" Who is he?

Then, as if to legitimize herself as a trustworthy source, Huerta held out her necklace, a chain of letters that spelled out "Sí Se Puede." She and Chávez had coined the phrase -- "Yes, we can" -- during a 1972 protest with the National Farm Workers Association, and now both candidates for the Democratic nomination have adopted it. When Huerta finished her speech, the leaders voted on which candidate to endorse. Their decision would carry more weight if it were unanimous, if each leader went home and spread a candidate's name through the Latino neighborhoods of Montebello, West Adams and Boyle Heights. One man at the table stood up and suggested that the entire federation should back Clinton. After a three-minute debate, the other leaders agreed.

Huerta rose at the center of the table and clapped her hands.

"We can do this together," she said. "It doesn't matter if you are not a citizen. You can get other people to vote. Let's talk to every voter we can."