Scoring · Later presidents

Roosevelt, Theodore
1901–1909

Adam Cuerden. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

TR's New Nationalism — 'malefactors of great wealth,' Sherman Act enforcement, food-and-drug safety, and a strong-state corrective to corporate excess — is the cleanest progressive-Republican lens.¹²³ Hinojosa's anti-billionaire/anti-corporate launch framing and data-center cost-shifting critique are the closest 2026 echoes; Abbott's mega-donor relationships and hands-off corporate posture sit against TR.

Abbott

Hinojosa

Margin

H +3

Issue

Abbott

Hinojosa

'Malefactors of great wealth' / anti-corporate framing

Hurts

Helps

Abbott: Hurts · Hinojosa: Helps

TR named concentrated corporate power as the Republican enemy; Hinojosa's launch line about 'the billionaires and the corporations who are driving up prices'³¹ is the direct 2026 echo, while Abbott's relationships with Yass ($6M) and Tim Dunn's voucher infrastructure²⁷ align him with the donor class TR critiqued.

Data-center cost-shifting onto ratepayers

Hurts

Helps

Abbott: Hurts · Hinojosa: Helps

TR's Sherman-era posture targeted exactly this kind of cost-externalization onto consumers; Abbott's hands-off data-center stance lets large industrial actors push costs onto households,²⁵ while Hinojosa's data-center cost-shifting critique¹ is structurally a TR-style trust-busting move.

Private-equity acquisitions of healthcare facilities

—

Helps

Abbott: — · Hinojosa: Helps

TR's food-and-drug safety frame extends to consolidation in essential services; Hinojosa's targeting of private-equity hospital acquisitions¹ tracks TR's anti-consolidation instinct. Abbott has not articulated a position on this strand, so the row does not move him.

Conservation / property-rights extraction

Hurts

Mixed

Abbott: Hurts · Hinojosa: Mixed

TR built the modern conservation movement; Abbott's signed property-rights bills tilt toward extraction in the way TR opposed, while Hinojosa centers water reliability¹ but has not built a full TR-scale conservation platform.

Sherman Act-style enforcement against concentration

Hurts

Helps

Abbott: Hurts · Hinojosa: Helps

TR's New Nationalism centered on Sherman Act enforcement against concentrated economic power; Hinojosa's targeting of private-equity acquisitions of healthcare facilities and her data-center critique¹ reach for the modern Sherman Act lever, while Abbott's industrial-policy posture is welcoming to large industrial actors rather than skeptical of them.

Mega-donor relationships (Yass, Tim Dunn)

Hurts

Helps

Abbott: Hurts · Hinojosa: Helps

TR's 'malefactors of great wealth' phrase was aimed at exactly the donor-driven political infrastructure Abbott has built around himself — Yass's $6M and Tim Dunn's voucher-pushing apparatus²⁷ — while Hinojosa's no-corporate-PAC posture and small-donor profile¹ fit the anti-trust era's framing of political independence from large money.

Food and drug safety / consumer protection

Hurts

Helps

Abbott: Hurts · Hinojosa: Helps

TR signed the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act as the consumer-protection floor; Hinojosa's data-center cost-shifting critique and her targeting of 'big insurance and big drug companies' in adjacent contexts¹ pick up the modern consumer-protection strand, while Abbott's regulatory posture defers to industry on cost and oversight questions.

Water reliability as conservation analog

—

Helps

Abbott: — · Hinojosa: Helps

TR's conservation legacy is mostly thin in this 2026 contest, but Hinojosa's centering of water reliability as a Texas infrastructure question²⁴ is the closest available analog to the TR public-lands strand. Abbott's property-rights-favoring bills on extraction sit the other way, but the water-reliability framing is Hinojosa's affirmative move.

Roosevelt, Theodore1901–1909

Sources

Others in this cluster

Roosevelt, Theodore
1901–1909