Gina Hinojosa Thinks Texas Is Different This Time

I frankly haven’t been engaged in politics [long enough] to know enough about what happened. I can tell you why we’re on the ascent. I can tell you the reason I didn’t want my husband to run for office is because I grew up in a political family and I didn’t want that for my family. I wanted to escape that.

I knew how to make change happen through politics because I grew up seeing it happen, and that’s how I got where I am, really, by trying to make those changes happen. And it was always public schools that drove my work, and, really, being a mother, and knowing that I had to do everything that was in my power to make this world better for my sons.

The public-school situation all across the country is hardly perfect, but in Texas the situation seems particularly egregious. Give us some sense of where we are with Texas public schools and why your concern level is so through the roof.

Texas public schools are who we are as Texans. They are Friday-night lights. They are the largest employer in so many of our counties. They are enshrined in our Texas constitution as being essential to the preservation of our liberties. And most of us came from Texas public schools.

What we’re witnessing right now under Greg Abbott is really the destruction of Texas public schools. We have over a hundred and fifty school districts operating at four days a week because they can’t afford to operate at five days a week. We’ve had schools shut down—close to two hundred, if not more. We’ve had a teacher exodus because Greg Abbot has run them out. He has deprioritized professional teachers in the classroom, and he has a plan in Houston to convert a hundred public schools into A.I. schools, which is modelled after a private-school program co-founded by MacKenzie Price—one of his biggest donors—who’s given him over a million dollars in campaign contributions. It’s a model that replaces teachers with education guides and has kids learning on screens. And then Abbot passed a billion-dollar voucher scam last year. He put millions of dollars into rural primaries to try to unseat Republicans who voted with Democrats against vouchers. That’s never happened before. We’ve never had a sitting governor of Texas go after members from his own party, but he did, and he successfully beat them in their primaries and got pro-voucher candidates elected.

Governor Abbott has said that Democrats like you either don’t understand school-voucher legislation or they lie about it. What would you say to a voter who’s all in on school vouchers, and supports the idea of school choice, as it’s called?

Well, I wouldn’t call it school choice. It’s the school’s choice, right? The school gets to decide who it accepts. It’s not the family who gets to decide which school they can go to. Vouchers—where they have happened across this country—have been shown to cause learning loss on par with pandemic learning loss. It’s that significant.

What we’ve seen across the country and what we’ve seen in Texas is that [switching schools] has not been a realistic option for families trying to leave public schools—it’s really been an option for families who have their kids in private school already, and now want government subsidies to pay for that tuition. And so, look, my position on this comes from the fact that the vast, vast majority of the 5.4 million schoolkids in Texas really only have one choice and it is their neighborhood public school. And so that should be the best choice. Our schools are lagging considerably—and they’re worse off than they were twelve years ago, before Greg Abbott became governor.

I think some outsiders would say that James Talarico is ahead in the polls not least because he’s facing a pretty inept opponent. How would you assess your own opponent? He’s ahead in some polls, and you’re ahead in other polls—it seems very, very tight. In terms of the qualities of Abbott and Paxton, I think I’d rather be running against Paxton. So where do you find difficulty running against the current governor?

The current governor is deeply unpopular in Texas. People now have seen the in-our-face corruption. He’s given nearly a billion dollars in no-bid contracts to his donors. I just filed a lawsuit this week, because he’s refused to release e-mails between himself and Elon Musk. Elon Musk has given, just to Greg Abbott’s campaign, a half million dollars. He has received 1.7 billion in property-tax breaks, and tens of millions of dollars in just cash grants. Over the summer, we learned that Greg Abbott intervened to redirect a hundred-million-dollar broadband contract to Elon Musk’s business.

Data centers have emerged as an in-our-face physical manifestation of that reality. And there’s no bigger pushback against data centers than MAGA. These data centers have descended into rural Texas. We have more data centers than any state in the nation. So it’s created a real opportunity [for Democrats]. That and public schools, again, have created this opportunity for Texans to set aside partisanship and evaluate a candidate on that candidate’s own merits. I think at a time when Texans are frustrated, frankly, with both parties, there is an opportunity to forge a new way forward that is kind of free of that partisanship.

What have you been hearing about Donald Trump, who’s still the standard-bearer of the Republican Party, that you weren’t hearing when he was winning the state again and again and again? How has opinion changed?

People who supported Trump are deeply disappointed. The corruption, frankly, I think, is the thing that is most upsetting to Texans, because Texans understand that corruption comes at a cost, and it comes at a cost to our pocketbooks. And, at a time when the cost of everything is so high, we just can’t afford to pay that cost. Trump is underwater in polling in Texas. Abbott hasn’t broken fifty per cent all year. People just want change. This is an election in a change year. People don’t want politics as usual. Nobody wants the status quo, and that just creates this opportunity for a Democrat in Texas.

How has the state changed demographically, or otherwise, in the last decade or more to help the Democrats in some way?

The Latino vote has grown tremendously. We saw that the Latino vote went for Trump last time.

That would’ve been my next question.

There’s no guarantee Latinos will vote for Democrats, but Latinos are voting for a candidate who is good for their pocketbooks, a candidate who facilitates an environment for prosperity. And in this high-cost economy, what we’re hearing on the ground across the state is that Latinos are angry and want change.

But they’re angry for economic reasons, not because of immigration policy.

Both. It’s both. Yes, absolutely, because of the high-cost economy, but it’s also because we are a deeply patriotic people, and we have racial profiling happening in Texas. We had two young men on their way to enlist in the Marines in South Texas, where I’m from, be pulled over and beaten by ICE. We’ve had Latinos who are undocumented killed by ICE in Texas. We had an American [killed]: the first ICE killing under Trump in this term happened in South Texas. So there is anger; there is fear. Many of us come from mixed-status families. My own mother was born in Mexico. My grandmother never became a citizen, and so these ICE raids are literally hitting home. And while we all want border security, strong border security, these ICE raids are making us less secure, not more secure. And most people in Texas don’t believe we should be treating people who have been in our communities, who are part of our communities and have been for twenty years, who are law-abiding, hardworking members of our communities—we shouldn’t be treating them like somebody who’s just crossed the border and should be thoroughly vetted, right? There should be a path to legalization that doesn’t currently exist for so many members of our families.

Tell me this: Greg Abbott is outspending you by a tremendous rate. How can you overcome that imbalance—what I assume is a pretty significant imbalance—in terms of money, with just a couple of weeks to go?

We don’t have to spend as much as Greg Abbott does, because what you do with campaign cash is you tell people who you are and what you’re about. And that’s actually his problem. People know who he is, what he is about. His name I.D. is something like ninety-eight per cent of Texans, right?

And what is yours?

And mine now is probably hovering around eighty. When I launched, it was probably under twenty per cent, and we’ve spent this year working hard, reaching Texas voters, crisscrossing the state several times over. And so we’ve made up that gap. That’s why the polling has gone from having us nine to ten points down when I launched to having me—now we got six polls in five weeks showing me beating Greg Abbott. But we haven’t had a poll in the last two months that had me outside the margin of error. So, you’re right, it is neck and neck, and it’s all about turnout.

You tried to get Abbott to debate you. And, as far as I understand, he refused. I watched this fascinating video of you debating an empty podium, which is not the first time I’ve seen that covering politics. Did that have any impact?

I don’t know if it did except to tell Texans, “Listen, this man won’t debate me. He’s fearful of something. He’s running from his record. He’s running from voters.” If he were actually telling the truth in the millions of dollars of negative ads against me, he would have the courage to debate me, but he knows his ads are lies, and that’s why he’s refusing to debate.

I’m not sure he does know his ads are lies, as you put it, and there must be some reason that Texans have some loyalty to Abbott. Why do you think that is? What is his appeal? When you think about it intellectually or from a distance, what is Abbott’s persistent appeal to Texans at this late date, even if some of the trends that you are talking about, whether it’s school closures or rising prices, are, in fact, true?

Well, I don’t know if it’s “trends.” It’s his record, right?

Greg Abbott has changed. He is not the candidate who originally ran for governor. He was viewed at that time as, I guess you would call it, a moderate Republican. What we have seen lately—there’s a saying at the Capitol, and the saying is, “The lights are off at the governor’s mansion.” People have a real sense: nobody’s working. Our leaders are just doing politics. They’re not actually working to solve our very difficult challenges in this state, and Texans have felt left behind.

What’s your relationship with him personally?

I don’t have a relationship with him.

Never have?

No, I never have.

Even in the political realm?

With Greg Abbott, no, I never have. He doesn’t really have relationships with legislators. He’s a pretty isolated governor.

Texas has four of the ten biggest cities in America. California has only two. New York has my own humble city. How does the urban-rural divide play out in a state like Texas electorally, politically, culturally?

Well, Texas is a country, right? Our size and diversity is like that of a nation, and it has been the source of political and partisan division. Democrats have wondered for years, how do we do better in rural Texas, for instance? And, really, it is this environment we’re operating in—where data centers and public schools loom so large in rural Texas—that is helping Democrats and helping me to be given a chance in this race by Republicans in rural Texas.

I guess what I’m asking is, I can imagine how you might speak to and appeal to certain kinds of voters in Houston and Dallas and San Antonio, et cetera. How do you reach rural conservatives in Texas? What’s the language you use there? What’s your ability to connect there?

It’s the same language, frankly. The way I describe my politics is populism, economic populism, and that is the same message that motivates urban voters versus rural voters, right? People want a leader, a governor who will work to make their lives easier. Nobody in 2026 in Texas has the luxury of fighting culture wars. We’ve been doing that for ten years, and we’re all worse off in Texas. The only winners of the culture wars are fifteen billionaire tech dudes. And, by the way, you should know that populism has its roots in Texas. L.B.J.’s grandfather was part of the Farmers’ Alliance, which organized against big railroads, and, in much the same way, it is this power imbalance we’re experiencing in Texas between the people—which is ninety-nine per cent of us—and tech giants. At this moment in time, it is the same message that has appeal across party lines.

You know, as an editor, I was just reading a piece that one of our reporters did in the state of Alaska. And the report he’s written is basically telling me that we may think we know something about Alaska, but that Senate race there is all about—wait for it—king salmon and the disappearance of that fish. And it means that much economically and culturally to those, what is it, seven hundred and fifty thousand Alaskans. What is it that we in New York, or California or Chicago, who are interested from a distance about what’s going on in Texas politics, are missing? What is really at the center of the political conversation in Texas?

It is a fear of a future where we don’t have control. Young people in Texas fear [losing] opportunities in light of A.I. advancements. I come across young people who can’t even apply for a job because they are blocked by an A.I. interview system, and they’re trying to figure out how to hack the algorithm to get their application through to be able to be considered for a job. There is economic frustration and anger, and anxiety about the future—and about the present, frankly. I’m coming across Texans who are having to donate plasma two to three times a week to have enough money to pay their bills, right? Middle-class Texans, teachers.

They’re giving blood.

They’re donating plasma, yes, to be able to make ends meet.

Are you in agreement with somebody like Bernie Sanders, who thinks there should be a moratorium where A.I. and data centers are concerned?

My position is there should be a moratorium until we can pass laws to protect Texans. What [A.I.] is not for is to replace human beings. It is not to replace teachers. It is not to replace nurses, right? It should not be making life-and-death decisions. It should not be blocking opportunities for jobs. I think it’s so interesting that we had these A.I. giants say, “We’re going to all agree to slow down our technology, the work that we are doing, for fear that we might break the world.” And then they were sued for collusion. And the reason they were sued is because that’s not the way it’s supposed to work. The way it’s supposed to work is that we’re supposed to have elected representatives who create that legal framework and those legal guardrails to protect Americans, and that is not happening. And that is the frustration.

I was in Amarillo, the panhandle of Texas, where they are building the world’s largest data center. It’s called Project Matador. It is on state land. The biggest investors are former Governor Rick Perry and his son. They negotiated a deal with the city council to get their water for the largest data center in the world from the municipal water source in an area that struggles with drought pretty regularly. So when I say there are no protections right now in Texas—there’s nothing.

I want to dig into immigration again. Greg Abbott might be most memorable for our listeners for his plan to send more than a hundred thousand migrants to sanctuary cities. You remember that well. Did Texas Republicans see that as effective immigration policy? And how is Operation Lone Star, as it was called, how is that viewed by Texans today?

There are mixed reviews on Operation Lone Star. It was very expensive. Just financially.

How did you view it?

Well, as a boondoggle, frankly. Because we spent billions of dollars on Operation Lone Star. We spent billions of dollars prosecuting immigrants who were charged with trespassing, and detaining these immigrants. We spent even more money paying for their defense, because that is the law, and the vast majority of them were released from detention and back out into the community.

We applied for eleven billion in reimbursement, but we spent so much more than that. I think we just got a seven-billion-dollar check from the federal government. Much of this money was spent in no-bid contracts, much of it went to Greg Abbott’s donors, right? It was a whole dog-and-pony show—political theatre—to achieve nothing. Border crossings are significantly down. It’s not because of Greg Abbott, it’s because of Donald Trump, frankly.

So you’re giving Donald Trump some credit here?

Well, I think it would be hard to claim that Donald Trump isn’t the reason why crossings are down. But I will tell you the way I dealt with border-security issues in Biden’s Presidency. The December before his last year in office, I got a call from one of our border members in Eagle Pass who said, “Gina, this is the week before Christmas. They have shut down the international bridge to all commerce. We rely on that commerce to get us through the year. I need help.” I called the Biden Administration. We got on the phone. We had our border members on with the Biden Administration. They heard an earful.

The next week, the Biden Administration sent a delegation to Mexico to begin enforcing border security on the Mexican side. And crossings plummeted. If you check the numbers, crossings plummeted. Now, that wasn’t spending billions of dollars. That wasn’t this whole political-theatre dog-and-pony show. That was about old-school, old-fashioned leadership, where you just talk to people, you roll up your sleeves, and you get things done.

According to a new Marist poll, sixty-one per cent of likely Texas voters say that undocumented immigrants should stay in the United States if they meet certain requirements. Thirty-five per cent say they should leave. Mass deportations have been a big part of the Trump brand and Republican policy in the last couple of years. Is the mood shifting?

I don’t know if the mood has shifted, but I just think people did not think border security is what’s happening now with these ICE raids, where people are being killed. Public safety should be nonpartisan. Public safety should be about keeping everybody safe. And what is happening is not that. It is distorted into something else entirely, and most Texans know it, and they see it, and they don’t like it. So I think what you’re seeing is just a reaction to a policy that is an abuse of people’s rights, and that is frankly, a security threat to each and every one of us in Texas.

Has gender played a role in your race against Governor Abbott? Texas obviously has had Ann Richards in the past as governor, so electing a woman to statewide office there is not unknown, however rare.

My role as a mother is something that many mothers identify with—P.T.A. moms, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans. And, in fact, it is my role as a mother that drove my education policy. And so I’ve always come to education policy from the perspective of a mother. In that way, over the last ten years, I have formed alliances and even friendships with MAGA moms who see in my fight for public school—I still have a son in public school—the same thing they want for their kids, because MAGA moms love their kids, too, right? They want a good education for their children as well.

Where do you find common ground with MAGA moms or dads, and where is it less possible?

When I was in Red Oak, Texas, where they’re fighting seven data centers that are coming into their community, we had conversations about cultural-war issues. They knew they had been sold out by Greg Abbott on data centers, but they weren’t sure about me because I’m a Democrat. And so they asked to meet with me, and it was really a privilege to engage in conversation. They asked me about whether I support constitutional carry? And I responded no. I said, “What you call constitutional carry, I call permitless carry, and I think people should have a background check to carry a gun.” I voted against that. I voted against what you call constitutional carry. They asked me about Sharia law and I said, “Well, I don’t really know what Sharia law is—”

What does that term stand for? In other words, when somebody from MAGA says, “I’m worried about Sharia law,” what in your interpretation do they mean or think they mean?

I think they think it means a religious law that is not their religion and that would supersede American and Texas law. And so what I told them was, “I’m for American law, I’m for Texas law. I don’t really know what Sharia law is, but I don’t want Muslim Texans to be painted with it and be discriminated against with it.”

But it’s coming from somewhere. This fear is coming from somewhere and sitting in Texas, as you are. Where is it coming from?

It’s being driven by our leaders. It is being driven by Greg Abbott. It’s being driven by elected leaders who have really turned the culture wars into this way to distract from people’s economic struggles. When I sat down with these people and I said, “This is my fear,” they said, “No, we don’t mean regular Muslims.” And I think maybe I moved them. And I think they moved me, because I said, “Well, I’ll learn about what Sharia law is.” They said, “You need to know about Sharia.” I said, “O.K., fine. I’ll learn about what Sharia law is.” And we agreed that these culture wars have been tearing us apart. The culture wars are not winnable, because the culture wars are about our differences. They’re about our lived experiences, and in that way they are not winnable.

Let me ask you about the struggle within the Democratic Party itself. You described yourself as an economic populist, but at the same time I don’t hear you associating yourself with the D.S.A. stream of the Democratic Party. How would you place yourself in that battle for ideas and politics in the Democratic Party?

I think the reason young people in parts of the country are souring on capitalism is because the capitalism they experience is this crony capitalism. It is not the pure and original capitalism that my grandfather built a business in—

What kind of business did your granddad build?

He had a plant in a seed business, and he supported our entire family with the income he made on that business, and now my uncles run that business. Our small businesses are really struggling to hang on, and sometimes it’s because the government is subsidizing these big multinational corporations that are putting our small businesses out of business. And, yeah, so, people soured on that. I think that is what is missing in this political debate, that capitalism in and of itself is not a bad thing. It can be a good thing. It used to be a good thing in this country. It’s just that it has been so distorted.

Would you agree that the most outstanding or glaring example of crony capitalism is the President of the United States himself, especially in the second term?

Yes, it’s bad. It’s bad. I will tell you also, Greg Abbott has been engaging in crony capitalism for a long time.

It sounds to me that your eagerness to discuss Greg Abbott is understandable. You’re running against Greg Abbott. But you don’t seem to want to dwell too much on Donald Trump. Am I wrong?

When I started this campaign, I made sure my whole staff understood we have one enemy: it is Greg Abbott. And so I’ve spent a year focussed on Greg Abbott. And I will say, listen, I have to win Trump voters to win this race. Latinos went for Trump in Texas last year.

So it’s dangerous, a little bit, for you to attack Donald Trump, in a way, while running for governor of Texas.

People are angry at Donald Trump, and maybe regret their support of him. I don’t think it is helpful to rub their noses in his failures. And I think at a time when most Texans, probably most Americans, are recognizing that it’s really, really bad, we need to bring those people along and say there’s a better way forward. It’s a way forward that is maybe even almost post-partisan, where—because of the disappointments in both parties, because, let’s be honest, while it’s nowhere near as blatant as Donald Trump’s corruption, corporate influence has corrupted both political parties.

Can you give me an example on the Democratic side?

I can give you examples of elected Democratic leaders who will grandstand on culture-war issues only to vote with corporate interests again and again. I won’t name names because—

Why not?

Because, again, David, I have one enemy in this race.

You’re holding fire. Finally, a question for a real outsider like myself. For years, we’ve been looking at Texas politics and thinking, Well, here comes Beto O’Rourke. Now Charlie Brown is finally going to kick the football right through the goalposts; the Democratic Party is going to make a big comeback in the state of Texas. And then Lucy pulls the football away and Beto O’Rourke loses and loses again. Give me your prediction for what’s going to happen on election day.

I am Catholic, Mexican, and superstitious, so I don’t want to jinx myself, but I will tell you that I’d rather be sitting where we are than where Greg Abbott is right now. The difference between where Beto was in 2018—when we came so close—is that even Beto will tell you he thinks he would’ve won [the Senate] had he had a strong candidate running for governor. We have a ticket this year. We’ve had, in the past, Beto or Colin Allred, right? We’ve had one star, but not a ticket. We have, for the first time, not just me and James Talarico but Democrats running up and down the ballot in every state, House seat, State Senate seat, congressional seat. We haven’t had that in years in Texas.

So what I’m hearing is a prediction for a blue wave in the state of Texas.

I think there’s no doubt a blue wave is coming, and our job is to maximize it, because it’s an opportunity of a generation, really. This is not going to be a normal election cycle. People are angry at [the] status quo for good reason, right? And so, yes, we have an opportunity to win that—if we don’t, they’re never going to let us get this close again, I will tell you. And we know here in Texas that Republicans are already planning to redraw congressional maps next year now that the U.S. Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act.

So for the Democrats, an optimistic prediction from you followed by a very gloomy one, it sounds.

When they redraw the maps, when it’s all said and done, we’ll lose ten Democrats from Congress. We’ll lose five seats next year, [and then] the next U.S. census will show Texas gains another four to five seats. That’s about ten seats off the table for Democrats in Congress. There’s no Democratic control of Congress when that happens. Texas becomes too big, the math no longer works, and those are the stakes. We need a governor in Texas who will veto rigged maps. Whether they are rigged for Republicans or rigged for Democrats, I will be that governor. ♦