He's the man to fear -- unless he's on your side

"He is enormously talented at looking at voting patterns and demographics and figuring out where you can actually put votes together," Lehane said. "I remember the day before the California primary, there were polls showing it was a dead heat, and some even had Obama surging ahead. The campaign was hectoring him from the East Coast, and he guaranteed them a 10-point win, which is exactly what he delivered."

How could he make such a guarantee? Easy, Smith said. "The way we put it away well before election day was to get millions and millions of Democratic women to cast their ballots . . . before the election. Everything we had was geared to getting all those votes, absentee."

County registrars had lists of those who'd returned absentee ballots, and Smith, with an army of volunteers on cellphones, polled a couple of million of them. "We got to a point," said Smith, "where it was mathematically impossible for Obama to win on election day."

North Carolina is a different story. "In California, Hillary went in with an institutional and demographic advantage," said consultant Austin, referring to her name recognition and popularity among Latinos.

"In North Carolina, Obama goes in with the demographic advantage, and if Ace can pull that out, he will truly have proved his mettle."

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robin.abcarian@latimes.com