Clinton's California Dream Team

'One Down, Millions to Go'

Sitting in her office in Palo Alto last week, Rao picked up her phone and dialed her 60th voter in the past hour. As part of a push to win over undecided voters in the final days before California's primary, she had already talked to more than 500 voters in a week. On each call, she used a different introduction to avoid sounding rehearsed. This time, it was a drawn-out, expectant, "Hell-o-o."

"My name is Amy Rao," she continued, "and I'm a volunteer from the Hillary Clinton campaign. I just wanted to --"

Click. Another hang-up.

As chief executive of her company in Silicon Valley, Rao had never expected to spend her week like this -- to turn the firm's headquarters into a phone bank for Clinton's campaign and then make more calls than any of the 40 other volunteers. She hardly qualifies as a run-of-the-mill phone-banker. In the year since Clinton first called her in Bolinas, Rao has held five fundraising events for the senator that brought in a total of more than $1 million. She has introduced Clinton before speeches, toured with her through downtown Palo Alto and accepted an invitation for coffee at Clinton's house in Washington.

But Rao, the daughter of an Indiana shoe salesmen, had spent her childhood summers shucking corn, and she believed that no method of political activism was beneath her -- especially not now. So, after a full day of business meetings, she greeted a few dozen Clinton volunteers as they arrived at the office. Then started dialing.

"I don't mind turning the office over for this, because my main focus isn't really on my day job," Rao said. "It's on what my day job allows me to do."

Rao founded her company in 1994 and built it into a four-office, 60-employee force with loyal clients such as Google and Stanford University. Recently she had parlayed her success into a prominent career in political activism, throwing a dozen fundraisers each year and co-chairing an environmental organization. On the walls of her corner office, she displayed pictures that show her embracing mega-star Democrats such as Al Gore and the Clintons. So when the Clinton campaign called last month to ask whether she knew of any available office space in Silicon Valley, Rao hardly hesitated.

"Sure," she said. "Let's use my office."

At first, Rao had enforced a strict separation: Employees out by 5:30 p.m. and phone-bankers welcome after 6. But, as the campaign intensified in the final days before the primary, her boundaries eroded. Rao sat next to employees who had become Clinton phone-bankers and other callers who had arrived at the office shortly after lunch.

Rao's thumb and forefinger fiddled with a peace necklace as she sat through four, five, six hang-ups in a row -- many of them Obama supporters -- before finally settling into a conversation with an undecided woman. Rao talked to the voter about feminism, about electability, about Clinton's "mastery of policy" and "personal warmth." After 28 minutes, Rao had fashioned a new Clinton supporter.

"One down, millions to go," she said, setting the phone receiver back in its cradle. She stood up to stretch, and a calendar caught her eye.

"Wow," she said. "We're running out of time."

'I Just Had to Be There'

On Tuesday morning, Villaraigosa woke up to do his first radio interview at 5:30. Huerta canvassed Bakersfield before the polls opened. Rao arrived at a busy Palo Alto intersection just before 7 with Clinton signs to distribute -- only to find 60 Obama supporters already at the spot.

Reiner flew with Chad Griffin, his political adviser, to the election-night party the Clinton team had planned at a Manhattan hotel room. He had decided to spend 10 hours in the air in exchange for one night in New York because he wanted to watch history unfold in the same room as Clinton.

None of Reiner's Hollywood friends were planning to go, so his attempts to hitch a ride on a private jet had failed. He settled for a commercial flight from Los Angeles and arrived late. "It's one of those moments," Reiner said, "where I just had to be there."

Similar celebrations unfolded 2,000 miles away in California -- at a campaign office on César Chávez Avenue in East Los Angeles, where Huerta watched with other volunteers; in Rao's Palo Alto office, where her employees celebrated at a party with the phone-bankers they now knew so well; at a party in Burbank, where Villaraigosa took the stage and bellowed, "California is ours!"

The mayor was ushered to a collection of television cameras at the back of the room to share his perspective as a Clinton insider. He had watched her lead in California continue to mount -- 25 percent counted and a victory declared, 50 percent and still a resounding lead -- and he beamed with confidence. He dabbed sweat off his forehead and then leaned into a microphone.

"Everyone told us this race had tightened," he said. "But those of us who led this effort on the ground knew better. We had faith. We had faith in the work that we had done."