Democratic candidate for Texas governor Gina Hinojosa, center, stands on stage with other Democratic candidates after speaking at a rally, Saturday, July 18, 2026, in Lubbock, Texas. (AP Photo/Justin Rex)
Justin Rex/AP Photo/Justin Rex
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks at the Republican convention Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Julio Cortez/Associated Press
Gina Hinojosa had a plea for the crowd that came to hear her stump in McAllen last week during a swing through the Rio Grande Valley: set aside the culture wars.
People are struggling to make ends meet, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate said. Some teachers have told her they started donating blood to earn extra money to pay their bills. One left the profession to drive for Uber because they said the pay and insurance were better.
“Nobody has the luxury of the culture wars anymore,” Hinojosa told the couple hundred spectators, adding: “The only winner in those wars is like 15 billionaire tech dudes who have amassed money, who have amassed power, and who have amassed, it turns out, all of our data in the last 10 years, and they are about to blow up the world if we don’t come together fast to save ourselves.”
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Hinojosa has honed that populist message – everyday Texans v. billionaires – over the last year as she has gone from a virtual unknown Austin state representative to perhaps the most serious electoral challenger that Greg Abbott, the state’s three-term Republican governor, has ever faced.
RELATED: Greg Abbott is campaigning to make Texas more affordable. Here’s what his plan tackles — and misses.
She has been buoyed by political winds that are shaping the midterms into a potentially disastrous election cycle for Republicans in Texas as voters fume over rising prices and seemingly unchecked growth of big tech. Hinojosa has pinned the fault squarely on Abbott, who has held the highest office in the state for 12 years.
From opposition to private school vouchers to data centers and Flock cameras, Hinojosa’s central message is that Abbott has “sold out” Texas to his donors.
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“That’s what this election is about,” she told an energetic crowd of hundreds in her hometown of Brownsville. “Who does Texas belong to?”
Abbott started his campaign for a record fourth term with more than $100 million, an unheard of sum for a state race against an unknown challenger. He has already outspent Hinojosa 10-to-one through September, and that’s only likely to ramp up in the final stretch.
Abbott has sailed to double-digit victories over every one of his past Democratic challengers. But several recent polls have shown a closer race and at least one tracker, Real Clear Politics, has deemed it a “toss up.”
A September survey, by the Emerson College Polling Center, showed Hinojosa trailing by 3 points among likely voters but narrowing the governor’s lead from August. It also showed her up with key voting blocs, including independents and Latinos, that Abbott was winning at the same point in his 2022 bid against Beto O’Rourke.
Nicknames and billboards
The fact that the governor’s campaign is even mentioning Hinojosa by name may be notable. For most of this year, Abbott has instead been laser-focused on James Talarico, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate at the top of the ticket, who had much higher name recognition coming out of a competitive primary.
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But in recent weeks, Abbott has gone after Hinojosa directly, labeling her as a radical leftist and rolling out nicknames like “Gender Bender Gina” and “High Tax Hinojosa.”
While Hinojosa swung through South Texas this month, his campaign put up billboards along the highways saying she wants to raise taxes and is weak on crime.
The governor, whose TV ads had so far focused on his promise to slash property taxes, has started airing attacks on TV, as well.
Gov. Greg Abbott speaks with organizations involved in the announcement and roundtable discussion on Project Watershed 250 on Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, at UTSA’s San Pedro Building in downtown San Antonio.
Andrew J. Whitaker/San Antonio Express-News
Dave Carney, Abbott’s longtime political adviser, said Hinojosa has a voting record that is “out of step” with most Texans.
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He pointed to her past votes against a constitutional ban on a state income tax and against bans on transgender students playing on teams that align with their gender identity.
“Parents don’t want boys…competing against girls. That’s not a partisan thing. That’s not political. That’s a fact. Eighty-twenty, they do not want that,” Carney said. “Texans do not want an income tax.”
Still, he acknowledged that the race is close.
“Is it going to be close on Election Day? Yes,” Carney said. “Are we going to win? Yes.”
Honing her message
Hinojosa’s campaign knew it would be outspent from the start, so it set about crafting a plan to use the limited resources it had to introduce her to voters as quickly as possible.
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“A good inoculation to what may be $50 million in negative ads is people who feel like they really deeply know someone to make those ads unbelievable,” said Amy Friedman, Hinojosa’s campaign director. She added that campaigns traditionally save until they have enough money to make a big broadcast splash. “Sitting around and waiting to see if we were going to raise $100 million to go toe-to-toe with him in Houston and Dallas broadcast was not a risk we were going to take.”
The campaign decided to split the state into regions and run mini campaigns in each to get a better feel for where voters were on the ground, helping craft localized messages around school takeovers, data centers and Flock cameras.
It has leaned heavily on social media to get Hinojosa’s name out and hired Fight, a Democratic consulting firm whose strategists have helped craft populist messages for insurgent campaigns, including U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s successful bid to flip a Republican-held seat in Pennsylvania in 2022.
Supporters listen to Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa at the Eldorado Ballroom in Houston on Tuesday, July 7, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
The agency, which also crafted ads for Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in New York City last year, has focused on messaging that blunts Abbott’s attacks.
Hinojosa’s response to the “Gender Bender Gina” label was a digital ad pronouncing her “pronouns” as “mom, Texan and soon-to-be governor.”
Her campaign says it has more in the can, anticipating future attacks from the governor.
But Hinojosa has also benefited from some very lucky breaks that make this election cycle unique.
The data center debate that erupted this summer, both in Texas and nationally, played right into her campaign themes. In July, she called on Abbott to halt construction and bring lawmakers back to Austin for a special session to set rules on where they can be built.
Her first broadcast TV ad focused on the issue and ran exclusively in rural markets, part of an effort to win over Republicans and independents — or at least discourage them from voting for Abbott.
Abbott has ordered state regulators to ensure that data centers do not pass on costs for new electrical infrastructure to ratepayers. And he’s called on lawmakers to repeal the centers’ lucrative sales tax exemptions and set up rules on where they can be built when they reconvene in January. Last month, he ordered state regulators to conduct an audit of all data center projects seeking permits in Texas before they give any more the green light. And on Monday, Abbott told the state’s environmental agency to stop issuing permits at all.
Abbott’s office has rolled out a wave of letters from tech companies saying they support his calls for guardrails. A political action committee that advocates for the industry is now running ads supporting the governor.
“Part of the truth that this is competitive is in the way the Abbott campaign is behaving,” said Jim Henson, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Absent an issue like that it’s not likely we’ll see Gina Hinojosa show up on CNN, which we have seen,” Henson said. “The question is, when we get to the final weeks of the campaign and the fundamentals — ground games, mobilization, money to spend — are they too outmatched to close the gap?”
‘A puppet to Trump’
To win in November, Hinojosa will likely need to drive up turnout among Latino voters, especially in her home region of South Texas.
The Gremlin, a small bar and concert venue in McAllen, was packed on a Monday night as hundreds showed up to hear her pitch.
Many were devoted Democrats, eagerly cheering on her promise to fire Education Commissioner Mike Morath on her first day in office and to scrap the state standardized test.
Others were relatively new to political events, hearing for the first time her pledge to freeze electric rates and push lawmakers to use a portion of the state’s rainy day fund for $1,500 checks to every Texas household — an idea she joked President Donald Trump “stole” from her with his $5,000 promise if the GOP wins the midterms.
Democratic candidate for Texas governor Gina Hinojosa, third from the left, listens to Stephen Sanders, right, during a roundtable discussion on data centers, Saturday, July 18, 2026, in Lubbock, Texas.
Justin Rex/AP Photo/Justin Rex
Guillermo Guzman, 65, said he had never attended a rally before.
Guzman described himself as a swing voter and said he voted for Trump in 2024 — part of a wave of Latino support for Trump that helped turn border counties red for the first time. Within a few months, Guzman said he regretted that vote as he watched Trump cut government programs and launch the war with Iran.
Guzman said he has also voted for Abbott, but now sees the governor as “a puppet to Trump.”
“We need change for the people, because they’re forgetting about not only the minorities, but people at the bottom,” Guzman said. “It takes us back to the kings and queens time, where you have the poor people there, you know, farming the land and doing all the horrible, ugly, dirty jobs. And the kings, what are they doing? Living off the money.”
Marina Elizondo, 60, was also attending her first rally.
Like Guzman, she said she has voted for candidates from both parties, including for Abbott during his first gubernatorial run in 2014. But her views of the governor have soured since, especially after “Trump came and he started showing how racist he was.”
“There’s just so much hate and so much division. It’s like somebody needs to do something, and these guys are not doing it,” Elizondo said. “I don’t do politics. But we need a change. So I’m hoping she’s like Ann Richards, Jr. and she’s going to bring that change.”
A rally in Brownsville at an event center decked out in white and pink the next night had a more familial feel.
Hinojosa grew up there and seemed to know several people in the audience, some of whom shouted out praise as she ran through her campaign spiel for the fired-up crowd.
Still, many there are more familiar with Hinojosa’s family members than the gubernatorial candidate, who has lived in Austin for years, said Fred Martinez, a longtime Democratic activist who was at the rally. Hinojosa’s father, Gilberto Hinojosa, was the Cameron County judge for 12 years and served for more than a decade as chair of the state Democratic party.
“The family, we’ve been interacting with them for 40 years,” Martinez said. “I don’t know her personally, but most of the time, you know, like they say, ‘Who’s your family? Who’s your parents?’ That tells you more or less who you are.”
Martinez said the turnout was “really good” for a candidate few had heard of a year ago. But he said Hinojosa has a long way to go.
“If it was even money-wise and all that, she’ll take it. But he’s gonna flood the airwaves,” Martinez said. “When you’re a first-time runner statewide, it takes time for the people to get to know you. And there’s never enough time.”