Clinton Campaign Has First Paid Texas Staff

The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign has its first paid Texas staff and is launching a series of meet-ups across the state to coalesce her support as the March 1 primary draws nearer.

Carlos Paz Jr., a community activist from Houston, who announced last week that he has been hired as Clinton's Texas lead organizer, appears to be the campaign’s first official hire in Texas.

On Wednesday, Clinton’s campaign would confirm only that it now has paid staff in all states holding their nominating contests on March 1, including Texas. The campaign declined to identify individual staffers in Texas.

The campaign's tentative schedule for meet-ups includes gatherings through the end of January in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas Fort Worth and the Rio Grande Valley.

Clinton’s campaign has been tight-lipped about its Texas operation, even as questions have cropped up about its commitment to the Super Tuesday states. In a blog post published Wednesday on the campaign’s website, one of its staffers in the March 1 states, Brad Komar, said any suggestion the campaign is not “laying the groundwork beyond the four earliest states” is false.

"We’re a campaign, and we’re here to win, so we obviously don’t want to telegraph our game plan,” wrote Komar, who's from Colorado. "Across the country, we’ve got more than 100,000 volunteers who have made more than eight million voter contact attempts nationwide."

The campaign for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, challenging Clinton for the Democratic nomination, has included paid staff in Texas since November and has a campaign headquarters in Austin.

Since launching her campaign, Clinton has visited Texas several times for fundraisers and public events. This week, she held fundraisers in Houston, Beaumont and San Antonio.