For Democrats, a Rare Force Commanding in Cowboy Boots

Had she not followed her grandfather’s instructions, Ms. Guerra, now a Democratic strategist, might have gone down a different path. Now 31, she recalls how voting in that local election — though she cannot remember what was on the ballot — started her on a journey that has included leading the bruising but successful recent campaigns of two state senators and a state representative.

Of her grandfather’s instructions, she said, “I just remember him yelling names at me, he was a couple of booths down.” She remembers thinking, “This is embarrassing.”

Her former employers say Ms. Guerra is a force behind the scenes, and more than a mere up-and-comer for the state’s beleaguered Democratic Party. She is viewed by some in the party as a rare weapon for progressives in a conservative stronghold.

Part of Ms. Guerra’s drive comes from a lack of patience with Democrats who think the party’s time will eventually come.

“We’ve been in this holding pattern for so long, like we have to wait until ‘this’ year before Texas turns blue,” she said. “I just think, I am not getting any younger. I don’t want to wait for it to happen. I just want to make it happen.”

The second of five children, Ms. Guerra was raised by her mother and her grandparents.

Her mother held a number of odd jobs, including part-time work at an Army surplus store, before landing a job at the state’s Health and Human Services Commission. She eventually joined the state employee’s union and became enthralled with Democratic politics.

Ms. Guerra, a graduate of Texas A&M University, said her mother’s passion, along with lessons in elections and politics from her grandparents, steered her toward her current path.

She became a field worker for the Texas Democratic Party, then eventually joined Representative Chris Turner, Democrat of Grand Prairie, when he was working for former United States Representative Chet Edwards. She became a consultant for Mr. Turner’s campaign when he decided to run for the Texas House.

Her latest victory came this month, when she helped propel State Senator Sylvia Garcia, Democrat of Houston, to victory. Ms. Garcia defeated Representative Carol Alvarado, a fellow Houston Democrat, in a special election that began late last fall and started with a field of eight candidates.

“We were both interviewing each other,” Ms. Garcia said. “I was looking for the right manager, and I think she was looking for the right candidate, and I think it was just the right match.”

“I saw her handle more than one problematic issue on the campaign to where you saw she was chiquita, pero picosa,” Ms. Garcia said, using a phrase meaning small but spicy. (Ms. Guerra is barely 5 feet tall in her signature cowboy boots.) “You saw where she was there to protect me as a candidate, there to protect our campaign.”

Ms. Guerra joined Ms. Garcia’s team a week after leaving the victorious campaign of State Senator Wendy Davis, Democrat of Fort Worth, who survived a challenge from former Representative Mark Shelton, Republican of Fort Worth, in the most expensive state Senate race of 2012.

Ms. Davis said Ms. Guerra was one of several people the senator interviewed, and though she lacked experience in a race of similar size and expense, Ms. Davis was soon won over.

“Despite how unassuming she can be, she was not at all afraid to ask for the job and assure me with tremendous confidence that she knew she was capable of doing it,” she said. “It’s a pretty rare quality for a person of her age, and for a woman, and probably even more rare for a woman of that age who is a Latina. But she has a tremendous self-confidence, and I think that’s one of the things that keeps her very happy to be behind the scenes.”

Ms. Davis came to believe her decision when she saw how Ms. Guerra commanded her field workers.

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2 Conflicting Legislative Agendas Arise From Gun Safety Task Force in Connecticut

Democrats called for an expansion of Connecticut’s assault-weapons ban that would cover a broader array of weapons, ban their sale and make it a felony to possess an assault weapon without applying for a certificate of possession from the state. Democrats also called for a ban on large-capacity magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

Republicans joined Democrats in calling for universal background checks, expanded safe-storage requirements, added requirements to buy ammunition and other measures. They cited 16 areas of agreement. Still, Democrats and Republicans ended up with sharply differing agendas on the most contentious issues, which leaders of the Democratic-controlled General Assembly must now address. The six leaders of the two houses aim to draw up legislation perhaps within the next week.

Democratic and Republican leaders of the gun-violence subcommittee of the Legislature’s Bipartisan Task Force on Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety Tuesday said gun legislation had proved extraordinarily complex and contentious, given a historic outpouring of responses from opponents and supporters of new gun-control measures.

“My experience, having been in the Legislature for 32 years, is the level of broad-based interest in this subject is unprecedented,” said State Senator Martin Looney, co-chairman of the guns subcommittee. He said the volume of contact from residents and the galvanization of public interest was “extraordinary.”

But it was clear that bipartisanship had its limits.

Republicans hailed the committee’s “comprehensive approach to gun safety,” which they said would close loopholes in current law and restrict who can legally possess specific weapons.

But they said that partisan differences remained. Speaking for Republicans on the subcommittee, Representative Craig Miner, co-chairman of the guns subcommittee, said: “We believe it’s not the gun that kills the person. It’s the person that actually kills the person. That sounds kind of cold, but that’s the way it is.”

Gun-control advocates said that it was now up to the Democratic majority, acting in concert with a strong antigun agenda from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, to act decisively in response to the Dec. 14 shootings that left 26 children and educators dead.

“For Republicans to think that is a response to Sandy Hook is just outrageous,” said Betty Gallo, a lobbyist for gun-control groups, adding that she didn’t understand why, almost three months since the shooting, “the Republican members of the task force brought forward a proposal that doesn’t address the enormity of what happened.”

The lack of consensus in the committee came as Democrats have become increasingly frustrated by the deliberativeness of the process while other states, including New York, have passed major gun legislation. On Feb. 21, Governor Malloy announced an aggressive agenda similar to what emerged from Democrats on the committee.

Last week, Senator Looney and the Senate president pro tempore, Donald Williams, both Democrats, urged action by March 13 — the next day, March 14, will signify the third month since the day of the shootings.

In a letter to colleagues, they wrote: “Other states — New York, Colorado and Maryland — have taken action since the Newtown tragedy. In Connecticut, we must not bow to pressure from those who would delay action as a way of blocking common-sense reforms.”

But Mr. Miner said there was no virtue in moving forward too quickly and added that the response to the New York legislation should serve as a warning to legislators in Connecticut.

“I don’t consider the time to be an issue,” Mr. Miner said. “If you look at some of the laws that have been passed already by our neighbors, some of the recommendations they are trying to recover from. Did they really finish their job when they passed the first bill? I would suggest they didn’t.”

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Senate Democrats, Accusing G.O.P. of Obstruction, Try to Force Hagel Vote

Mr. Hagel’s nomination was endorsed by the Senate Armed Services Committee along party lines on Tuesday. But with Republicans demanding more information before allowing a vote on Mr. Hagel by the full Senate, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, took procedural steps to limit floor debate on his nomination and bring the partisan clash to a head by Saturday.

“This is the first time in the history of our country that a presidential nominee for secretary of defense has been filibustered,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. “What a shame. But that’s the way it is.”

Republicans, sensitive to the accusation that they were filibustering Mr. Hagel, tried to draw a distinction between a filibuster and delaying the vote because of unanswered questions.

“There’s nothing unusual about this,” said Senator James M. Inhofe, the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, who on Tuesday suggested without evidence that Mr. Hagel was “cozy” with Iran, an accusation that caused the committee meeting to erupt with Democratic outrage. “There’s not a filibuster,” he added.

Even if Republicans succeeded in dragging out the vote into the weekend, Democrats said they remained confident that he would be confirmed by Saturday because Republicans did not appear to have the 40 votes necessary to block the nomination. Such a move would be an extraordinary step, and one that Republicans seem wary of taking should they find themselves in the White House four years from now.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, meanwhile, said on Wednesday that he intended to try to block the nomination of John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s choice to be director of the C.I.A., until Mr. Brennan provides answers to questions he had on the scope and legality of the Obama administration’s drone operations. Democrats have also sought to extract more information from the White House about those operations.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Intelligence Committee chairwoman, said she expected to schedule a committee vote on Mr. Brennan’s nomination when the Senate returned from recess the week after next. She said that Mr. Brennan would make a “strong and capable C.I.A. director.”

According to the Senate’s historian, Donald A. Ritchie, only 5 percent of presidential cabinet nominees have been blocked or rejected by the Senate. Only twice since 1917, when the Senate’s modern filibuster rules were created, has a cabinet-level nominee been subject to a supermajority vote of 60, as Republicans are forcing with Mr. Hagel.

In the case of Mr. Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, the opposition is especially striking because senators have traditionally afforded their former colleagues a high level of courtesy. But many Republicans still nurse a grievance against Mr. Hagel for his opposition to the war in Iraq, and others have sought to make an issue of statements he has made on Israel and Iran. Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona want the Obama administration to provide information about the timeline of its actions on the day of the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, an episode that has become a point of conservative ire against the president.

When Mr. Hagel testified before the Armed Services Committee he was pummeled.

As Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, Mr. Brennan has been the chief architect of the administration’s drone policy, and his nomination has focused new attention on it. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Mr. Obama said that he planned in the coming months to work with lawmakers to “ensure not only that our targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists remain consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the American people and to the world.”

White House officials on Wednesday did not give any details about Mr. Obama’s plans for more transparency about the targeted killing program, which has long been shrouded in secrecy.

Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee have expressed frustration that the White House has not allowed lawmakers to read the legal memos, written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provide the justification for the targeted killing operations in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere and that have been expanded during the Obama administration.

The committee said that the Justice Department had written 11 secret legal memorandums related to the targeted killing of terrorism suspects but said the Obama administration had shown the committee only four of them.

Senator Feinstein did, however, provide new details about the extent to which her committee has been briefed by the administration about drone strikes.

“The committee has devoted significant time and attention to targeted killings by drones,” she said in a statement. “The committee receives notifications with key details of each strike shortly after it occurs, and the committee holds regular briefings and hearings on these operations” to review their basis and effectiveness.

She added that Intelligence Committee staff members had held 35 monthly oversight meetings with government officials “to review strike records (including video footage) and question every aspect of the program.”

Charlie Savage contributed reporting.

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