09/10/2026
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In more than 180 years of statehood, Texas has been led by a woman only twice, and never once by a Latina. This November, Gina Hinojosa is poised to make history -- twice over. A five-term state representative from Austin, she won her party's nomination as a decided underdog, challenging Greg Abbott, a three-term Republican governor, staunch Trump ally, and one of the best-funded incumbents in the country, who has outspent her by roughly 14 to one. Almost no one expected the race to be close. It is now, by the latest polling, a virtual tie.
"I never wanted to be a politician -- I was just an angry mom," Hinojosa says. Years ago, when state budget cuts threatened to close her son's school in Austin, she rallied the other parents, ran for the school board, and kept the school open. But schools kept closing across Texas as Republican leaders siphoned money away from public education, starving district budgets -- so she ran for the state House, where she went on to help win more than $11 billion in school funding, reduce standardized testing, and pass teacher raises.
"I've seen firsthand," she says, "how Governor Abbott's rich donors run Texas at the expense of our schools, our communities, and working families."
The fight is rooted in a phrase her grandmother gave her, growing up in the Rio Grande Valley: "No te dejes." It has no clean translation. "It was like a tough-love statement, almost like a scold," Hinojosa says -- "'No te dejes!' -- 'Know your worth, and defend it!'" Or, as she puts it another way, fight back. The phrase followed her from South Texas to the statehouse to the campaign trail, printed on the signs her supporters waved when she launched her run in Brownsville.
"This is the Valley community that raised me and made me the woman I am today," she told them. "I am a proud product of a Texas public school."
Her whole case against Abbott can be summed up in one sentence: "We have a governor right now who works for the billionaire class and not the people of Texas." She has refused corporate PAC money and her campaign reports an average donation under $50 -- a deliberate contrast with Abbott, whose war chest, among the largest in American politics, has been fueled by billionaire megadonors and corporate interests.
"Our fight right now is against the billionaires and the corporations who are driving up prices, closing our neighborhood schools and cheating Texans out of basic healthcare," she said in her launch video. "That's who Greg Abbott works for. I'm running for governor to work for you."
Public schools are where the fight began for her -- and where it remains fiercest. This year, Abbott signed a $1 billion private-school voucher program -- one of the largest in the country -- steering public dollars toward private tuition even as more than 150 Texas schools close their doors. He did it after accepting more than $12 million from Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, a leading national funder of school vouchers, whose earlier $6 million check to Abbott was the largest single campaign donation in Texas history.
Hinojosa, who helped beat back Abbott's voucher push four separate times before it finally passed, does not dress up her opposition to it. "It is a grift," she says. "It is a way to pad the pockets of the well-connected."
The newest fight -- and one that has galvanized voters across the political spectrum -- is over data centers. Over the past year, the sprawling facilities that power the AI boom have become one of the most contentious issues in Texas, as communities from Abilene to El Paso have risen up against the strain they place on the power grid, the water supply, and their own backyards; polls show most Americans now oppose having one built near them.
Abbott spent years courting the industry and its big donors, branding Texas the "epicenter" of AI development and lavishing data centers with tax breaks as they made the state the largest such market in the nation, often over the objections of the communities forced to host them.
Then, in recent weeks, as the data center backlash grew and the race tightened, Abbott made a swift reversal, abruptly recasting himself as a 'skeptic,' announcing a "moratorium" on new projects. But the pause changes less than it sounds: the state's hundreds of existing data centers keep running, the more than 200 projects already in the queue continue through review, and the audit at its center is set to conclude in December -- a month after the election.
Hinojosa, who had called for real limits on the industry a year before he acted, was rightly unimpressed. "A temporary moratorium is a scam," she has said, "because Abbott will likely lift it on November 4th, right after the election." No one, she added, believes "the arsonist will put out the fire."
That credibility gap -- the widespread doubt that Abbott will choose local communities over his AI industry donors once the votes are counted -- is driving support to Hinojosa from unlikely places. Hinojosa has drawn support from lifelong Republicans and self-described "MAGA moms" alarmed by the school closures and the data-center boom -- a coalition, she notes, that "is not coded Democrat or Republican."
That crossover support helps explain how a race Abbott was expected to easily win has collapsed into a dead heat: the double-digit lead he held has narrowed, poll by poll, to a virtual tie. She remains, by most measures, the underdog. No Democrat has won a Texas governor's race since Ann Richards in 1990. The fact that the race has become so competitive, against a three-term incumbent with every advantage of money and incumbency, is already its own kind of upset.
The history she could make does not strike Hinojosa as remarkable. Texas is nearly half Hispanic, and she finds a Latina governor long overdue, not improbable. "To me, it is natural and normal that there would be a Latina governor for Texas," she says. "We are a huge part of the population." Asked whether the state is ready, her answer is two words: "Why not?"
That is the spirit her grandmother pressed on her all those years ago in the Valley -- no te dejes, know your worth and fight for it. Outspent 14 to one, dismissed as a long shot, Hinojosa has pulled even with one of Trump's most loyal allies among the nation's governors, a three-term incumbent almost no one thought could be caught.
Whether she wins in November or not, she has already forced a race that was supposed to be a coronation into a genuine contest. And if she does win, a state that has been led by a woman only twice, and never by a Latina, will have made history on both counts at once -- carried there, she would say, not by money, but by the many.
--> To learn more about Gina Hinojosa's campaign for Texas governor, visit https://ginafortexas.com/
For an inspiring book about Latinas making history, we highly recommend "Latinitas: Celebrating 40 Big Dreamers" for ages 6 to 10 at https://www.amightygirl.com/latinitas
For more books for all ages starring Latina Mighty Girls, visit our blog post "60 Empowering Books Starring Latina Mighty Girls" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=13062
For books for children about trailblazing female political leaders in the U.S. -- both historically and in modern times -- check out our blog post, "Remember the Ladies: 25 Children's Books on Women in Politics" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=11162
For our favorite t-shirt honoring women throughout history who were willing to shake up the system, check out the "Well behaved women seldom make history" t-shirt -- available in a variety of styles and colors for all ages -- at https://www.amightygirl.com/well-behaved-women-history-shirt
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