AUSTIN, Texas (CNN) -- Garry Mauro will never forget that night in 1972 when he says Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham ignored the post-election party surrounding them, instead preferring to huddle in a corner and talk about changing the future. Hillary and Bill Clinton worked on George McGovern's 1972 campaign in Texas before they wed in 1975. The young then-unmarried couple, attending Yale Law, weren't interested in letting off steam with their Democratic colleagues in Austin, Texas, according to Mauro, who's now a strategist with Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The three were among a group of Young Turk Democrats working that summer to register voters in Texas. The Clintons had just started dating, said Mauro, who years later became Texas land commissioner. "They obviously had a lot of respect for each other, and they would spend hours talking to each other."
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Longtime Clinton pal recalls boozy post-election party in '72
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Newly dating Clinton and Rodham display early political intensity
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Will Texas rev up Clinton's White House bid -- or end it all?
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Ex-Clinton official Dee Dee Myers calls Texas "do-or- die test"
The friendships and alliances Sen. @placeholder made during those days sowed the seeds of a statewide grassroots network of supporters that she's counting on to win in 2008.