Hinojosa pitches $1,500 refund amid Abbott's $180 million campaign spending

Abbott pauses new data-center approvals in response to public anger

Gina Hinojosa pledged a one-time $1,500 payment to each of Texas’s nearly 32 million residents as one of her earliest campaign pledges, saying the money would come from the state’s emergency savings fund. She called the proposal the “Corruption Tax Refund.” Republican incumbent Greg Abbott’s campaign had spent $180 million since last year, while billionaire Elon Musk had spent tens of millions backing Republicans, the Associated Press reported.

The Associated Press said Abbott’s spending was part of what was thought to be a safe path to a fourth term. The source said Hinojosa proved that money in politics has clear limits. She started her campaign last year with little money or name recognition, at a time when bigger-name Democrats seemed reluctant to enter the race. She built a populist challenge by railing against data centers and corruption to take on Abbott. The source described Hinojosa as a decided underdog whose result brought her national prominence.

Hinojosa also seized on growing national rejection of data centers, accusing Abbott of allowing artificial intelligence data centers and other energy-hungry server facilities to multiply. Abbott responded to public anger with a temporary moratorium on new data-center approvals.

The Associated Press said Hinojosa’s governing approach was likely to open a dramatic political and cultural shift at the Texas Capitol. The AP said that over the previous decade, Texas had passed one of the nation’s strictest abortion laws and pursued increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement. Her victory gives Democrats a potent veto pen, but the extent of her power will be tested in a statehouse where Republicans still have a majority.

Hinojosa was elected Tuesday as the first Democratic governor of Texas in more than 30 years, defeating Republican incumbent Greg Abbott. She will become Texas’s first Latina governor and the first Democrat to hold the office since Ann Richards in 1990. The AP characterized the result as a stunning upset and Texas as the nation’s most populous red state, and said the win could accelerate the state’s emergence as a battleground.

The AP said the victory validated Democrats’ long-deferred expectation that demographic changes in Texas would be followed by a shift in political power. It described Hinojosa as a 52-year-old state legislator from a liberal Austin district since 2017 and said the victory elevated her into a breakout Democratic star. The AP also noted that she did not have significant support from the national Democratic Party for her campaign.

Abbott, whom the AP described as one of the nation’s most prominent Republican governors and a steadfast supporter of President Donald Trump, first took office in 2015 and won each of his previous races by double digits.

From the start, Hinojosa accused Abbott of prioritizing the wealthy over everyday people and failing to bring down costs. Abbott said she wanted to raise taxes and painted her as a radical and a threat to Texans’ way of life.

Hinojosa was once vice chair of the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus and a defender of transgender rights, which became a centerpiece of Abbott’s attacks. She tried to shake off the progressive label throughout the campaign, batted away culture-war issues and presented herself instead as a populist. Her campaign included advertisements featuring Republican voters who said they would support her.

In one campaign spot, Hinojosa said, “They want to run an entire campaign saying that I’m too woke,” and added, “I plan to spend an entire campaign focused on the fact that working people are too broke.”

The governor contest unfolded alongside Democrat James Talarico’s hard-charging U.S. Senate campaign against Republican Ken Paxton, one of the nation’s marquee races. The AP said Hinojosa proved durable while benefiting from the tailwinds of Talarico’s effort. Just two years after Trump carried Texas by double digits, the upset reflected what the AP described as a glum national mood that weighed on Republicans even in a stronghold where Democrats had not won in decades.

At the national level, Abbott’s defeat was expected to set off alarms among Republicans, who depend on winning Texas in presidential election years to maintain a path to the White House.