Texas Rep. Gina Hinojosa joins Democratic race to challenge Gov. Greg Abbott

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Texas Rep. Gina Hinojosa on Wednesday announced she is running for governor in 2026, setting up a potential clash between Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and one of the Legislature’s most strident critics of his school voucher program.

“Our fight right now is against the billionaires and corporations who are driving up prices, closing our neighborhood schools and cheating Texans out of basic health care,” Hinojosa, a five-term Democratic lawmaker from Austin, said in her campaign launch video. “That’s who Greg Abbott works for. I’m running for governor to work for you.”

Hinojosa’s entry expands a Democratic primary field that includes Andrew White, a Houston businessman and son of former Gov. Mark White, Bobby Cole, a rancher and retired firefighter, and Bay City Council member Benjamin Flores. Whoever wins the nomination will be a decided underdog against Abbott, who had more than $87 million in his campaign account at the end of June and has won all three of his gubernatorial races by double digits.

In a statement, Abbott campaign manager Kim Snyder called Hinojosa “out of step with Texans.”

“Texans deserve a Governor who will continue to secure the border, fight for safer communities and uphold family values — not someone who supports failed, radical policies that hurt hardworking Texans,” Snyder said.

White said in a statement that Hinojosa is a “progressive who represents her district well,” but that Democrats needed a “candidate who will bring together progressives, moderates and independents to beat Greg Abbott.”

Hinojosa, a civil rights and union lawyer who grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, was scheduled to formally launch her campaign at a rally in Brownsville Wednesday evening.

In her campaign launch video, Hinojosa said she first decided to run for office when her son’s elementary school faced possible closure due to state budget cuts. She was elected to the Austin ISD school board in 2012, where she later served as board president before winning election to the Texas House in 2016.

Through nearly a decade in the Legislature, Hinojosa made defending public education her calling card, becoming a primary foil to Abbott on private school vouchers. In her launch video, she contrasted her efforts to bolster public school funding with Abbott’s pursuit of vouchers, which she argued would “devastate our schools.” She also criticized the governor for accepting $10 million in campaign donations from Pennsylvania GOP megadonor Jeff Yass, one of the nation’s leading voucher proponents.

“Abbott’s corruption runs deep. The billionaires he works for will not stop until they get what they want,” Hinojosa said. “As long as we have a governor that can be bought, we won’t have the Texas we deserve.”

Hinojosa’s campaign also touted legislation she passed to bring in almost $1 billion in federal funding for indigent health care in Travis County and to reduce standardized testing and increase teacher pay.

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