Gina Hinojosa (D)

Hinojosa has built her tax messaging around what she calls the 'Greg Abbott Corruption Tax,' arguing the incumbent has handed out 'sweetheart deals and tax breaks to billionaire donors' while ordinary Texans absorb higher costs, and she has pledged to 'put money back in their pockets' as governor. On property taxes, she has proposed using the roughly $11 billion in unpaid federal Operation Lone Star reimbursements to fund property tax relief for households earning under $75,000 — rather than Abbott's across-the-board cuts — and has also called for returning unspent Rainy Day Fund dollars to taxpayers. She has not embraced a state income tax (Texas constitutionally bars one) and has not detailed federal individual or corporate rate positions, though her affordability frame consistently targets 'billionaires and corporations.' She broke with most Democrats to endorse President Trump's proposed federal gas-tax suspension, calling it a 'non-partisan' cost-of-living issue. She has not taken a specific public position on Trump's 2025–2026 tariffs.

Hinojosa has been the Texas House's most visible voucher antagonist, voting against Senate Bill 2 in 2025 — Abbott's signature $1 billion ESA program — and declaring on the committee floor that the bill 'is projected to take billions and billions of more billions this biennium that we could use on our public school students' while 'school districts are having to make tough decisions of closing schools.' She authored the Fully Fund Our Future Act in the 88th Legislature, a $40 billion proposal that would have raised teacher pay by $15,000 and support-staff pay by $5,500, and during HB 2 debate in 2025 pressed TEA Commissioner Mike Morath on class-size waivers and what 'fair' teacher compensation would look like. On the Austin ISD board from 2012 to 2016, she served as president and oversaw the year in which every AISD high school met state accountability standards for the first time, then resigned the presidency in December 2015 to run for HD-49. She has not detailed a specific universal pre-K proposal.

Hinojosa has made the cost-shifting of data-center power consumption onto residential ratepayers a centerpiece of her affordability pitch, telling voters that 'all of our electric bills will go up about $600 a year because of the cost for these data centers to operate' and adding that 'these data centers are owned by some of the richest men in the world. When I'm governor, they will pay for themselves.' She has paired the electricity argument with a water argument, saying the state should guarantee residents 'enough drinking water and water to live on in their homes' before industrial data-center water draws are approved. In January 2026 she hosted then-ERCOT interim CEO Brad Jones for a League of Women Voters listening tour focused on grid reliability and load growth. She has not yet released a detailed plan to regulate AI itself, algorithmic accountability, or model-training data; her published platform addresses data centers only as a grid and affordability issue.

Hinojosa has built her general-election message around what she calls 'Greg Abbott's corruption,' telling the Texas Observer she is running because 'we have a governor right now who works for the billionaire class and not the people of Texas.' She voted 'aye' on May 27, 2023 to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, one of 121 House members in the 121-23 bipartisan impeachment vote. On campaign finance, she has refused corporate PAC contributions throughout her gubernatorial bid — her campaign reports an average donation under $50 — and loaned her own campaign $300,000 to launch. She organized the first Texas House Democratic Caucus quorum break in two decades in July 2021 over voting restrictions (SB 1) and broke quorum again in August 2025 with 50 other Democrats to delay Abbott's mid-decade congressional redistricting map, sheltering with Govs. Newsom and Pritzker.

Hinojosa's healthcare platform centers on accepting federal Medicaid expansion dollars — she has repeatedly argued Texas should 'draw down funds to insure about a million Texans and keep rural hospitals open,' framing it as 'reclaiming resources residents have already contributed.' She has targeted private equity and 'big insurance and big drug companies' for 'putting profits over patients' and pledged to 'rein in these out-of-control profiteers who are making healthcare more expensive and making Texans sicker.' On abortion, she voted against the 2021 six-week ban (SB 8) and has said the Dobbs decision was 'unjust,' writing that 'everyone deserves access to health care and the ability to determine their future, including when to become a parent' and that she 'won't stop fighting to restore and expand access.' She has publicly disclosed having an abortion 23 years ago and a later miscarriage, framing reproductive care as a personal as well as policy issue. She has not published a stand-alone mental-health plan.

Hinojosa voted against SB 10 in 2025, the bill requiring a state-prescribed Ten Commandments poster in every Texas public-school classroom, but during House floor consideration she successfully offered an accepted amendment shifting the cost and burden of defending the inevitable Establishment Clause litigation onto the state attorney general rather than individual school districts — language adopted with no recorded vote. She also voted against HB 3614 in 2023, which authorized uncertified chaplains to serve as school counselors, and was one of only two Democrats on the House Public Education Committee (alongside Rep. James Talarico) to vote against HB 900, the 'READER Act' library-book restrictions. She has not personally used the 'deeply un-Christian' framing that Talarico made famous on Ten Commandments displays, but her committee and floor votes have consistently aligned with the church-state-separation position. Her campaign platform does not address religious-liberty law directly.

Hinojosa's economic frame is affordability under corporate consolidation, with her launch speech declaring 'our fight right now is against the billionaires and the corporations who are driving up prices.' She has criticized Abbott for 'hoarding our taxpayer dollars' and proposes returning unspent state surplus and Rainy Day Fund money directly to households, plus pursuing the $11 billion in Operation Lone Star reimbursements still owed by Washington. On energy and grid reliability, she has linked the affordability message to data-center load growth (see AI/Data Centers) and has hosted ERCOT for public reliability briefings since Winter Storm Uri, though she has not endorsed re-regulating the ERCOT market or rejoining the Eastern Interconnection. Water reliability — 'a governor who is going to guarantee that the citizens of Texas will have water when they turn on the tap' — is a stated top-tier priority. She has not put forward a dedicated housing-supply plan.

Hinojosa's signature business-law accomplishment is HB 3488 (85R, 2017), which she authored to create Texas Public Benefit Corporations — a corporate form that legally allows directors to weigh social good alongside shareholder return — and which became Chapter 776 of the Acts of 2017. On the campaign trail she frames her economic priorities as 'supporting small business and working Texans' in contrast to 'incentivizing private equity and corporate giants.' She has publicly discussed the minimum wage in Texas — which remains tied to the federal $7.25 floor — and has appeared on Fox 26 Houston to support raising it, though she has not committed to a specific dollar figure or veto threat as governor. She has not staked out a detailed position on the Texas franchise tax (margin tax) threshold or rate. Her public-benefit-corporation work and her PAC-money refusal are her clearest signals on small-business posture.

Hinojosa has made Operation Lone Star a central indictment of Abbott, repeatedly calling the program a waste of taxpayer dollars and saying 'DPS officers are being paid overtime to be on the border when border crossings are at record lows' and that the money would be better spent 'into local community policing.' She has demanded Abbott sue the federal government to recover the roughly $11 billion in promised Operation Lone Star reimbursements still outstanding. On immigrant communities themselves, she has said 'border security is important and we need a secure border, but at the same time, we should not be treating immigrants who have been in this country for twenty years who are hardworking and law-abiding as criminals.' Her launch speech in Brownsville leaned into her Rio Grande Valley roots and her grandmother's phrase 'no te dejes' ('don't let them push you around'). The available record does not include a specific, on-the-record stance from her on SB 4 (2023), the state illegal-entry felony statute, or on DACA/Dreamer-specific state policy.

Hinojosa's cannabis record is mixed and reflects a medical-access-yes, recreational-caution posture. She coauthored HB 2107 in 2017 to legalize a broader medical-marijuana program and HB 81 to decriminalize low-level possession, and she filed HB 122 to give patients an affirmative defense against prosecution, testifying 'this bill does not legalize marijuana' but provides a legal shield. On the 2025 hemp-THC fight she voted YES on SB 3, the original sweeping ban on consumable hemp-derived THC products, but voted NO on HB 1535 expanding the Compassionate Use Program in an earlier session. After Abbott vetoed SB 3 in June 2025, she reacted on social media: 'Let me get this straight, so I'm supposed to show up for a special session this summer to ban THC?' She has not endorsed full adult-use recreational legalization in her gubernatorial campaign.

Hinojosa opposed Texas's 2021 permitless-carry law (HB 1927), raising a point of order on the House floor that temporarily stalled the bill before its 84-56 passage. She authored a 2017 TribTalk op-ed laying out a Texas gun-violence-prevention agenda including expanded public education on safe gun usage and requiring a license to carry long guns, writing that 'gun violence is a public safety and public health issue.' After Uvalde, she said lawmakers should 'be real about our ability to keep public safe from AR-15s,' noting AR-15s are banned in the Texas Capitol because they 'can't keep lawmakers safe' against that firepower. She has appeared at 'March for Our Lives' rallies in Austin alongside Parkland and Sandy Hook survivors. The available record does not include a specific Hinojosa endorsement of a Texas red-flag/extreme-risk-protection-order statute or of raising the long-gun purchase age to 21, though Uvalde families have pushed the latter.

Hinojosa's aging-and-disability record runs primarily through her broader Medicaid-expansion argument: she has tied accepting federal dollars to keeping rural hospitals open and insuring 'about a million Texans,' which would disproportionately benefit older and disabled Texans currently outside the coverage gap. She has criticized private-equity acquisitions of medical facilities — relevant to nursing homes and long-term-care chains in Texas — saying she wants to 'rein in these out-of-control profiteers who are making healthcare more expensive and making Texans sicker.' The available public record does not include specific Hinojosa-authored bills on the Texas IDD Medicaid waiver waitlists (which exceeded 170,000 Texans as of 2025) or on home- and community-based services rate increases, nor a published plan addressing HHSC structure, the STAR+PLUS program, or the Promoting Independence Initiative. Her platform also does not detail a Texas response to federal Medicare changes. This is one of the thinnest areas of her published record.

Hinojosa opposed SB 14 (88R, 2023), the law banning puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and transition-related surgery for Texas minors, which passed despite three Democratic crossovers (Dutton, King, Thierry) — Hinojosa was not among them and voted with her caucus against the ban. She voted 'no' on the Parents Bill of Rights (SB 12, 89R, 2025), the omnibus that would have banned preferred-pronoun use, restricted gender-identity discussion, and dissolved gender/sexuality student clubs in Texas public schools. She filed HB 73 in 2021 to ban the 'gay/trans panic' defense in Texas criminal trials; the bill was rejected in committee. On book bans, she was one of only two Democrats on the House Public Education Committee to vote against HB 900 (the READER Act), publicly mocking that her son's favorite series like 'Captain Underpants' could fall under its 'pervasively vulgar' language. She has consistently sided with LGBTQ student and youth-protection positions across multiple sessions.

Hinojosa's foreign-policy footprint is light for a state-house member; the most specific position on the record is her self-reported support for the BDS movement, listed on her iVoterGuide candidate profile as backing 'Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions to pressure Israel to withdraw from occupied territories, remove the separation barrier in the West Bank, allow full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees' (candidate self-report). On the border/Mexico question she has framed Operation Lone Star and SB 4 as bad-faith political theater rather than serious binational policy and has invoked her family's Rio Grande Valley and Mexican-American roots, with her Brownsville launch using her grandmother's phrase 'no te dejes.' The publicly available record does not include specific Hinojosa statements on Ukraine aid, Taiwan, broader China policy, or the 2023 Texas foreign-land-ownership bills (SB 147/SB 17) restricting Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and North Korean nationals' property purchases. Foreign affairs is not a stated pillar of her gubernatorial platform.