Hinojosa becomes Texas’ first Latina governor and first Democrat elected since 1990
Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa said Thursday she would build a bipartisan administration after her midterm upset of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a victory that made her the first Democrat to win the office since 1990 and Texas’ first Latina governor.
The pledge came at her first news conference since the election, part of a Democratic wave of wins that included James Talarico flipping a U.S. Senate seat. “We are forging a new way forward,” Hinojosa said. “People are tired of the divisions, tired of the fighting, tired of the culture wars.”
She extended the same framing to the incoming administration itself. “This is not about being a Democratic administration. I’m not going to be the governor for just Democrats,” Hinojosa said. “I’m going to be the governor for all the people of Texas.”
The result broke decades of Republican control of the governorship in the nation’s second-most populous state. Hinojosa, a 52-year-old state legislator from Austin who was raised on the Texas-Mexico border, was a heavy underdog against Abbott, who significantly outraised her but was denied a record fourth term two years after President Donald Trump carried Texas by double digits.
The upset underscored how a glum national mood weighed on Republicans across the country, even in a stronghold where Democrats had not won in decades.
Hinojosa said Abbott was “gracious” after her victory and committed to helping her prepare to take office in January.
Her campaign gained major political momentum over its final months, centering heavily on public education, outrage over data centers and a push to lower costs. Among the first appointments to her transition team is a former rural Republican lawmaker who opposed Abbott’s push for private school vouchers, which Hinojosa has supported repealing.
The agenda now faces a divided Texas Legislature, where Republicans lost the state House but still control the Senate.
Hinojosa is the daughter of a former Texas Democratic Party leader. Her political career began in 2012 with a run for an Austin school board seat, a race she said was driven by budget cuts that threatened to close her son’s campus. She was elected to the Texas House in 2016 and later became a vice chair of the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus.
She worked to shed that progressive brand during the governor’s race, shrugging off culture-war fights and saying her focus was affordability.
Democratic state Rep. Christina Morales said her party would stick to those issues now that it is back in power. “The people who flipped this House didn’t run on culture issues,” Morales said. “They ran on the economy. They ran on the schools.”