“While we have been fighting these culture wars for 10 years in this country — culture wars that are not winnable because they depend on your personal experiences, your lived experience — the only winners have been the tech giants that are amassing our money and our power and all of our data.” — Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic candidate for governor of Texas.

Click here to watch, listen or read her conversation with Lulu Garcia-Navarro. nytimes.com - Gina hinojosa interview

Oct. 24, 2026

Democrats have Texas-size dreams this election of flipping a state that has eluded them since the 1990s. While the Democratic candidate for Senate, James Talarico, has gotten most of the attention and money in that fight, another Democrat, Gina Hinojosa, has looked surprisingly competitive against the most powerful politician in the state: Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican running for an unprecedented fourth term.

Hinojosa is a Texas state legislator who represents parts of liberal Austin. Her political rise began on her local school board, where she was inspired to run for the State Legislature because of cuts to public school funding under Abbott. That became one of her signature issues, which she has carried over into her run for governor.

When she began her campaign, she was seen as the longest of long shots: a Latina with little statewide name recognition and not a lot of financial support. Today, the most recent New York Times/Siena University poll shows her narrowly ahead of Abbott, and national Democrats are finally taking notice, directing money toward the race in these last few crucial weeks. I asked Hinojosa whether that will be enough to overcome an extremely well-funded Abbott, who declined our interview request. We also talked about why she is focusing on affordability, education and data centers rather than what she calls “culture-war issues” and how she is trying to pull in disaffected rural MAGA voters. Can she win? And what will it say about Texas if she does?