Hundreds of cars and trucks are already parked up in the field across from the dance hall where Jasmine Crockett is due to speak when the word comes through. The owner of the farm building nearby has been in touch. Any vehicle not removed will be towed. It causes midmorning pandemonium as people hurry from the venue to re-park their cars along the straight, narrow farm road, and the mood suggests the nuisance is not coincidental.
“They’re tryin’ to test us,” one woman says.
“Not one Lubbock police here for this today. Not one.”
Thirty minutes later, there’s a straight line of cars parked for half a mile on either side of the Hideaway events hall, a plain corrugated steel building whose inside has been prettified by floral displays and fairy lights. It’s an unlikely place to hold any event: a lonesome country road about 11km south of Lubbock amid agricultural supplies buildings and barren cotton fields. The sun is shining but there’s plenty of February left in the wind. But the extra effort of getting here, and parking here, seems symbolically appropriate.
Crockett, the 44-year-old Democrat congresswoman with a reputation for feisty one
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