Gina Hinojosa defeats three-term Texas governor Greg Abbott
Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated three-term Republican Governor Greg Abbott on Tuesday, ending his bid for an unprecedented fourth term and breaking the Republican hold on Texas’s highest executive office. She will be the state’s first Latina governor and the first Democrat to win the governor’s mansion since Ann Richards in 1990. The result, which had seemed improbable only weeks earlier, is described as Democrats’ most consequential victory in Texas in a generation. Since 1990 the party has struggled to turn urban growth and changing demographics into statewide wins; even Beto O’Rourke’s 2022 challenge to Abbott ended in defeat.
Hinojosa, a five-term state representative from Austin and a former Austin school board president, entered after other prominent Democrats declined to run against Abbott, a staunch ally of Donald Trump with a formidable fundraising operation. Her candidacy began as a long shot, overshadowed by fellow Democrat James Talarico’s more closely watched campaign, but she gradually closed the gap, with some polls showing the race neck and neck. Public education drew her into the contest; her campaign later stressed affordability and opposition to the expansion of large-scale data centers in a state that, under Abbott, has become a national leader in that construction. Abbott kept a large financial advantage and attacked her in Trump-style terms as too “woke,” including the label “gender-bender Hinojosa.” She answered with an advertisement declaring her pronouns: “Mom, Texan and soon-to-be governor,” and sought traditionally Republican voters with a populist economic message amid frustration with Trump’s presidency.
Hinojosa grew up along the US-Mexico border. Her mother is an immigrant from Mexico, her father served for several years as state Democratic party chair, and her sister, Xochitl Hinojosa, is a long-time Democratic operative who previously served as spokesperson for the Department of Justice.
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