Do we like Gina Hinojosa?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record and a real win for public schools, held back by a campaign that sidelined LGBTQ+ issues and a pronoun gag that stung.
From there she went to the Texas House as an Austin Democrat and kept at it for nearly a decade. In March she won the Democratic nomination for governor with nearly 60 per cent of the vote in a field of nine. On 3 November she then did what most pundits thought was a long shot and knocked off a three-term incumbent.
On the harm check, her record is mostly good but not spotless. IBTimes calls her a long-time LGBTQ ally in the legislature, and she has opposed anti-trans bills there. But her campaign site didn't list LGBTQ rights as a priority, and her Pronouns ad, with its line about being “Mom, Texan, and soon to be: Governor”, struck several trans voters as dismissive. Meanwhile Abbott's campaign threw 'Gender Bender Gina' press releases and a Lotería-card post at her, and that abuse aimed at her says nothing bad about her.
The most interesting stoush before polling day was a lawsuit. She took Abbott to Travis County court seeking unredacted records of his office's dealings with Elon Musk and his companies, after a 2025 records request returned 1,374 pages that were almost all blacked out. Abbott's side called it a political stunt and sought dismissal. The case was still pending when we last saw reporting on it.
Then there was the property-tax brawl. Abbott's campaign put about twelve million dollars into ads saying she voted for higher property taxes more than 40 times. Hinojosa says she has never voted to raise them and that those votes are taken out of context. We found no independent fact-check, so where you land depends on whether you read those votes as tax hikes or as procedural ones.
The good stuff is mostly about schools. Her platform is to revitalise public education, end the voucher program and force lawmakers to rein in data centres. She also promised $1,500 back to every Texas household from the state's savings account. It's a pocketbook pitch, and it clearly worked on a lot of people.
So would we support her? Largely yes. She's an experienced public servant who won on bread-and-butter issues. But a queer reader is fair to wonder whether the culture-war silence was strategy or squeamishness, and the next two years should tell us. Watch how she treats trans Texans once she has the veto pen.