Democratic Party News: Texas Governor-Elect Vows Moderation

The democratic party news coming out of Austin this week is a promise that would have sounded impossible in Texas only a few months ago: moderation. Gina Hinojosa, the Democrat who stunned the country by defeating Governor Greg Abbott in the midterm elections, sat down for an interview at the state Capitol on Friday and vowed to trade the culture wars that have defined Texas politics for a generation for a government focused on the cost of living. Seated near a photograph of Ann Richards, the last Democrat to hold the office, she laid out a plan built on affordability, border security, data centers and schools.

Hinojosa will become the first Latina governor of Texas and the first Democrat to win the office since Richards was elected in 1990. Her victory was the headline result of a blue wave that swept every statewide office and flipped the state House, ending more than thirty years of Republican control of the executive branch. But she used her first extended interview since the election to make clear she does not intend to govern as a partisan conqueror, describing herself as a populist on pocketbook issues and promising to work with President Donald Trump on immigration.

"I don't see us trying to tackle culture wars. That was not the mandate we were given," Hinojosa said. "The mandate we were given was to deliver for Texans."

Midterm elections 2026: the upset that ended three decades of GOP rule

Hinojosa's win was one of the great upsets in modern American politics. The 52-year-old state legislator from Austin, raised on the Texas-Mexico border, was a massive underdog when she launched her campaign. Elected to the Texas House in 2016, she later became a vice chair of the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus, a record Abbott and conservative lawmakers used to paint her as a closet progressive. Her campaign, by contrast, was built around public education, anger over data centers, and a relentless push to lower the cost of living.

The strategy worked because the political ground shifted beneath the race. On November 3, voters delivered a verdict that cost Republicans control of both chambers of Congress, with Democrats picking up more than 40 seats in the House and eight in the Senate, and the wave ran just as strongly in Texas. Hinojosa ousted Abbott, and Democrats won statewide offices across the board, including a U.S. Senate seat flipped by James Talarico. In her first news conference after the election, she said she would build a bipartisan administration.

"We are forging a new way forward," she said. "People are tired of the divisions, tired of the fighting, tired of the culture wars."

Election results: a blue wave that swept every statewide office

The scale of the Democratic victory is what makes Hinojosa's moderation pledge so consequential. Democrats flipped every statewide office and the Texas House, a sweep that shattered decades of GOP control in the nation's second-most populous state. Two Democratic state senators will join her in the new statewide leadership: Nathan Johnson, elected attorney general, and Sarah Eckhardt, the comptroller-elect. The incoming lieutenant governor, Vikki Goodwin, is also a Democrat, giving the party control of the state's top offices for the first time since the mid-1990s.

The results were driven in part by voters who had not backed Democrats before. Hinojosa noted that she and Trump won the same border communities — he in 2024, she in 2026 — and Latino voters in places like her native Rio Grande Valley were instrumental in the wins. One county swung away from Republicans by more than any other in the nation. Texas is home to the country's second-largest Latino population, and her roots in the border region gave her a credibility with those voters that her party has often lacked.

There are limits to the sweep, and Hinojosa was frank about them. Republicans retained their majority in the state Senate, and some senators have suggested they may use Senate rules to strip Goodwin of her power to lead the chamber. Hinojosa said Goodwin has been working with her team to make sure the voice of the voters is heard.

Working with the Trump administration on border security

The most striking part of Hinojosa's interview was her position on immigration, where she staked out common ground with a president her party has spent the year opposing. In a Truth Social post on Thursday about migrant caravans forming in Mexico, Trump referred to her as "the very liberal new governor of Texas." Asked about working with the administration, Hinojosa answered with an offer rather than a rebuke.

"I agree with President Trump that our border needs to be secure and people should not be coming here to cross into the country," she said. "It's a dangerous journey and I don't think it will be fruitful for them."

She added that the Trump administration had not contacted her and she had not spoken to the president, "but I welcome that conversation." Asked whether she would end Operation Lone Star, the state border security operation Abbott launched in 2021 at a cost of more than $11 billion, she said she would review its legality rather than abolish it on day one. "It's essential that we have strong partnership with Washington … to make sure our local border communities are safe," she said.

But she drew a sharp distinction between securing the border and federal enforcement operations inside Texas. The election, she said, "was a referendum on how people are treated within our state." After a migrant was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent last July in Houston, and another ICE agent was indicted on federal assault charges there last month, she said securing the border was "very different from interior enforcement, which as we have all seen has been chaotic and dangerous and people died, people have been hurt. People are scared and angry and people's rights are violated and that has to stop."

That position puts her behind Democratic mayors who have pushed back against state enforcement mandates. Last week, Houston Mayor John Whitmire said he was directing police officers to limit their cooperation with ICE during traffic stops, challenging a policy Abbott imposed on the state's largest city. "That was wrong," Hinojosa said, "requiring our city police to hold people for ICE who were, for instance, reporting domestic violence assault. That is not good for public safety."

What day one looks like: the high-cost emergency

If the border is where Hinojosa is most willing to work with Washington, affordability is where she intends to act first and fastest. On her first day in office, she plans to declare a "high-cost emergency," freeze electricity rates and suspend the 20-cent-per-gallon state gas and diesel tax. She also plans to issue an emergency proclamation to the legislature to approve a measure that would send every Texas household $1,500.

"That is the emergency that families are experiencing in their homes right now: They just can't afford basics. They can't pay their electric bills. They can't afford to put food on the table. They can't afford to see the doctor," she said.

The agenda extends well beyond the first-day orders. Hinojosa plans to expand Medicaid, fully fund public schools including teacher raises, end state takeovers of school districts such as Houston, and dismantle Abbott's school voucher program. On vouchers, she was careful to say she would work through the legislature rather than by executive order — she voted against the program and vowed on the campaign trail to fight it, but now plans to reshape it, potentially using it to expand access to prekindergarten. "It's going to all be one big negotiation," she said.

She also promised to fire the state superintendent of schools, a software developer who has expanded state takeovers of local school districts and overseen a decline in student performance. Since the abortion ban went into effect, Texas lawmakers increased funding to $200 million for more than 100 antiabortion pregnancy centers under a state program she said she would review and potentially veto. "If it is not serving Texans, not serving their health care needs, not serving families, then, yeah, I would veto that funding," she said.

Hinojosa voted against the state's abortion ban, but during her campaign she released an advertisement about her decision to carry her first pregnancy to term even after genetic testing revealed a fetal anomaly. On capital punishment, she was equally careful. Hinojosa, who like Abbott is Catholic, personally opposes the death penalty, and Texas has executed more than 600 death row inmates since 1976. But unlike California Governor Gavin Newsom, who this month began commuting the sentences of all 548 inmates on his state's death row, she said she would consider those on Texas's death row "on a case-by-case basis and review and make a decision in accordance with the law."

What happens next: data centers, redistricting and the limits of power

The governor's power in Texas is considerable — the office holds virtually unlimited emergency powers — and some Republican lawmakers have said they fear Hinojosa will use them to overturn conservative laws on bathrooms, abortion and gender transition care for minors. Hinojosa said those fears are unfounded.

Once she is inaugurated on January 19, she promised to declare a moratorium on data centers — but only those that have yet to receive state permits, because "if they've already received state permits, I don't have the power just to shut them down." Hinojosa acknowledged that some communities fear their water will be shut off if there is only enough for them or the data centers, and said she would intervene with all her power to stop that happening, citing recent water shortages in Corpus Christi. "It can just never be the case that industry is prioritized over people for water that they drink and need to live."

On redistricting, she was equally candid about her limits. Hinojosa spoke out during her campaign against the mid-decade redistricting her Republican colleagues forced through the legislature last summer despite a Democratic quorum break, but she said she does not have the power to reverse it. "That's something that the legislature would have to pass a law to do," she said.

Whether a governor elected on a promise of moderation can hold that line once the legislature convenes is the question that will define her first year. The transition is already under way — Abbott has pledged full cooperation and her team is in place. The voters who flipped Texas did so, by her own account, because they wanted their government to deliver on the basics: lower costs, better schools, safe communities.

Source: The Washington Post