RALEIGH, N.C. — Sitting on the sunny patio of a coffee shop last weekend, Averell "Ace" Smith hardly seemed the kind of guy to strike fear into a politician's heart.
The 49-year-old California political operative -- who helped Hillary Rodham Clinton to victories in the California and Texas Democratic presidential primaries and is now running her North Carolina operation -- was a study in bland: beige polo shirt, beige slacks, bright blue eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses, a fringe of gray hair around a pink scalp.
Yet people -- many of them fellow Democrats -- frequently use melodramatic imagery to describe him.
"I believe that every life lesson in politics can be extrapolated from 'The Godfather,' " said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist and friend of Smith's who has worked for the Clintons.
"Some people are Fredos; at game time they disappear. There are Sonnys, who yell and scream. . . . The most effective ones are the Michael Corleones. Very quiet, they know under which rib to insert the knife. . . . Ace is a Michael Corleone."
The next round of the seemingly interminable quest for the Democratic nomination takes place Tuesday, when Indiana and North Carolina vote. They are the first contests since April 22, when Clinton beat Barack Obama in Pennsylvania.
The race is close in Indiana. In North Carolina, which has a sizable African American electorate, polls have shown Obama ahead, but Clinton has been gaining support over the last week. The fact that the Clinton campaign stationed Smith here signals how crucial the state is to her; she intends to fight for every vote.
"Everyone knew that Pennsylvania was essentially going to be a walk for Clinton and that the whole thing would come down to Indiana and North Carolina," said Joe Trippi, a top advisor to former presidential candidate John Edwards. "Guess where Ace Smith is? I don't think that's an accident."
If Smith can help Clinton seriously narrow Obama's margin of victory -- or even beat him -- in the Tar Heel State, the New York senator's argument that she is the more electable of the two will gain considerable strength.
A victory would also burnish Smith's reputation as a top-notch strategist and perhaps change his image as a fearsome practitioner of a dark political art: opposition research.
Ben Austin, a Democratic political consultant who worked in the Clinton White House and now supports Obama, put it this way: "He is one of the few balding, bespectacled guys who I wouldn't want to run into in a dark alley."
