Last weekend, Donald Trump’s state directors convened at Trump Tower in New York to discuss the road ahead. Most of them had come north for the occasion.

The Trump campaign is putting its time and money into the South, starting with South Carolina, because of the Republican primary schedule and because of the appeal of Trump’s brash populist message in the region. Thus, Trump has hired more staff there than in any other part of the country. He’s also worked overtime to burnish his credentials with evangelicals and veterans, blocs that hold outsize sway there.

Since August, he has also tilted his travel heavily to states south of the Mason-Dixon line, a trend that continues this week with a Monday rally in Anderson, South Carolina and two rallies in Florida.

“The South is where he has a real opening to get the nomination,” said one Trump insider, pointing to South Carolina’s Feb. 20 primary, the third contest for delegates. ”First of all, it fits the schedule. If he’s able to close South Carolina, he’s all set up for March 1,” when seven more Southern states have their primaries.

Trump played to regional tastes at his Monday evening rally, where he addressed an estimated 5,600 South Carolinians, according to the fire marshal's estimates. “You have a football team that’s doing pretty good. Clemson,” he said, drawing cheers from the crowd in Anderson, about 20 miles from Clemson University’s campus. “Can they go all the way? I think so.” A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign said the number of attendees was 7,943.

Trump went on to knock President Barack Obama’s push for greater gun control, while calling for a strengthened military and better services for veterans.

“We’ve got to take care of our vets,” he said. “Our vets are being treated so badly. You know I brought up the subject of illegal immigration, right? Our vets are being treated in many cases not as well as illegal immigrants.”

As he has in previous visits to the state, Trump nodded to Boeing, whose plant in North Charleston is a major employer. “Boeing now is going to have to build a plant over in China,” he said, linking his critique of U.S. trade policy to local concerns. Later in the rally, he again raised the prospect of the aerospace giant shifting operations abroad. “Watch what they do with Boeing,” he said. “Unless I get in, in which case don’t worry.”

Bruce Haynes, the Republican president of the bipartisan consulting group Purple Strategies, said of Trump’s exertions to appeal to the South through football, gun rights, and veterans’ services: “Some people call that pandering. Trump calls it connecting.”

South Carolina represents Trump’s best hope of a statewide victory among the first three voting states, based on demographics, voting trends and recent polls. The latest CNN/ORC poll gave him 36 percent support there, twice the level of his closest opponent, Ben Carson.

The mogul touted that result on Monday night. “Trump in South Carolina. Did you ever hear of a place called South Carolina?” he said to cheers. “Number one by a lot. By 18 points. Can you believe it?”

More than 40 percent of South Carolina delegates are awarded by congressional district, and Trump’s campaign set its sights early on locking down the 1st District, home of Charleston, the 2nd District, home of Myrtle Beach, and the 4th District in South Carolina’s upstate region, home of Greenville and Spartanburg, according to Trump campaign insiders.

Trump has one of the largest South Carolina presences of any Republican, with seven paid staffers, several full-time volunteers and three offices there. A fourth office, planned for downtown Greenville, will give Trump’s upstate team a physical footprint in the region. The Trump campaign hopes that a statewide win in South Carolina will propel Trump into the March 1 “SEC” primary.

“Trump is building a layered coalition and making smart investments in staffing,” said Haynes, who hails from South Carolina. “If we are going to call March 1 the SEC primary, then polls show that his team is leading the league.”

Of 11 state directors whose hirings have been announced by the campaign so far, seven are in Southern states. Of the eight Southern states that will vote by the March 1 SEC primary, Trump has state directors in place in six, all except for Arkansas and North Carolina.

The campaign has not forgotten those states either. Trump spoke at a dinner in Hot Springs, Arkansas, hosted by the state Republican Party in July. The campaign has had conversations with a handful of potential staffers in North Carolina and has begun lining up local endorsements there, according to Trump insiders.

Trump also announced a state director for Florida, which will vote on March 15. Trump travels to the Sunshine State on Friday and Saturday for events at his Doral Golf Course in Miami and in Jacksonville.

Since an August megarally in Alabama, most of Trump’s travel outside of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada has been to Southern states. One of his largest rallies since Alabama has been a Dallas event in September that drew about 20,000 people to the American Airlines Center, according to arena staff.

Meanwhile, Trump, who received multiple draft deferments during the Vietnam era, has concentrated on shoring up his standing among veterans.

After denigrating John McCain’s war record onstage at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa in July, a move that many political observers predicted would end his candidacy, Trump went on offense on veterans’ issues. In a heated news conference immediately following the comments, Trump attacked McCain’s record on veterans affairs.

His next public event, three days later, was in Sun City, South Carolina, a hub of veteran retirees, where he vowed to “do everything for the vets, who are being treated terribly.” The campaign also unveiled a “veterans for Trump” committee. Trump frequently laments the medical care provided by the Veterans Affairs administration and says that he would allow veterans to access private health care on the government’s dime, telling them, “You deserve it.”

Trump’s immigration rhetoric has resonated in the South as well. At the August Alabama rally, immigration hard-liner Sen. Jeff Sessions, who advised Trump on his immigration plan, appeared onstage and physically embraced the candidate.

And after receiving a mixed reaction to his answers about his faith at the Family Leadership Summit, Trump has begun touting his religiosity, especially during trips to the South.

Trump has so far polled first with evangelical voters, but his lifestyle — he has posed on the cover of Playboy and made much of his fortunes from casinos — and past support of abortion rights, among other positions, could make it difficult for Trump to hold on to the bloc. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has already made significant inroads with evangelicals in the past several weeks. One Trump insider, noting the overwhelming significance of evangelical voters in Louisiana’s Republican primaries, described that state as a weak spot for Trump in the region.

But Trump is working to keep the constituency in his court.

He occasionally brandishes his family Bible and a picture from his confirmation at campaign events. In August in Alabama and at subsequent rallies, Trump has said that the Bible is his favorite book, with his own “The Art of the Deal” coming in a distant second.

In September, he held a meeting with dozens of evangelical leaders at Trump Tower in New York, followed by a meeting with about 50 predominantly black pastors before a rally in Georgia this month. Among those present in Georgia were Pastor Wiley Jackson of Atlanta; Bishop George Bloomer, who has churches in Atlanta and North Carolina; and Apostle Stedroy Williams, who has a church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Attendees of the Georgia rally were treated to a mix of pop songs like the Beatles' “Hey Jude” and gospel music.

“It's a sign of the increasing political sophistication of the Trump campaign,” said Haynes of Purple Strategies. “They are targeting messaging to audiences with a goal toward maximizing delegate counts in their best states. That's a far cry from just making noise in debates and rallies. It's a real strategy built around playing to win.”