Gina Hinojosa begins work to take office as Texas’ 1st Democratic governor in decades

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa, the first Democrat to win the office since 1990, said Thursday she would build a bipartisan administration after her stunning upset in the midterm elections that shattered decades of GOP control in the nation’s second-most populous state.

Hinojosa, who will become Texas’ first Latina governor, made the pledge during in her first news conference since ousting Republican Gov. Greg Abbott as part of Democrats’ wave of wins, including James Talarico flipping a U.S. Senate seat.

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

Hinojosa, a 52-year-old state legislator from Austin who was raised on the Texas-Mexico border, was a massive underdog. She engineered a plucky and populist challenge against Abbott, who significantly outraised her but was denied a record fourth term just two years after President Donald Trump carried Texas by double-digits.

Hinojosa said Abbott was “gracious” after her victory and committed to helping her prepare to take office in January.

The upset underlined how a glum national mood dragged down Republicans across the country, even in a stronghold where Democrats had not won in decades.

Hinojosa gained major political momentum in the last few months of a campaign that centered heavily on public education, outrage over data centers and a push to lower costs. One of the first appointments to her transition team is a former rural Republican lawmaker who opposed Abbott’s push for private school vouchers, which Hinojosa has supported repealing.

Her agenda will be tested in a divided Texas Legislature, where Republicans also lost the state House but still control the Senate.

“This is not about being a Democratic administration. I’m not going to be the governor for just Democrats,” Hinojosa said. “I’m going to be the governor for all the people of Texas.”

The daughter of a former Texas Democratic Party leader, Hinojosa’s own political career started in 2012 while running for a school board seat in Austin, which she says was driven by budget cuts that threatened to close her son’s campus.

She was elected to the Texas House in 2016 and later became a vice chair of the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus. She worked to shed that progressive brand in her campaign for governor, shrugging off culture wars and saying she was focused on affordability.

Democratic state Rep. Christina Morales said her party would stick to those issues now that they’re back in power.

“The people who flipped this House didn’t run on culture issues,” she said. “They ran on the economy. They ran on the schools.”

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Wilder is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.