State Representative Gina Hinojosa pulled off a seismic upset in the race for Texas governor, The Associated Press said Tuesday, denying the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, a record-setting fourth term and making history as the first Hispanic to be elected to lead the state.
She also became one of the first Democrats to win statewide office in more than 30 years.
Ms. Hinojosa, 52, ended more than a generation of one-party rule in Texas, defeating a well-funded incumbent once seen as unbeatable.
The mood at her election night party at Assembly Hall in Austin, Texas, became electric almost as soon as the results started coming in. Many Latinas in the room became emotional when it became clear that she would become the first Hispanic governor in Texas, a state where Latinos make up the largest population in the United States.
Hundreds of people cheered and applauded each time the television screens showed the sitting governor, Greg Abbott, trailing her.
While much of the attention — and money — in Texas this midterm election season went to the state’s heated Senate campaign, Ms. Hinojosa emerged late in the year as a potential winner after polls shifted in her favor.
During his decade as governor, Mr. Abbott became one of the most powerful men to serve in that role, using executive orders and key appointments to strengthen his control over state operations. He drew on the connections and experience he gained as attorney general and as a justice on the Texas Supreme Court.
Ms. Hinojosa, who had never served in statewide office, brought his decades in public service to an abrupt and unexpected halt.
A civil rights and labor lawyer, Ms. Hinojosa has spent nearly a decade in the statehouse, representing a solidly Democratic district in Austin.
She only entered the race when no other Democrat would, part of her party’s push to field a candidate in every race in the state. But the headwinds facing the Republicans nationally became a wind at her back.
Like many competitive elections this year, the race for governor of Texas became a referendum on affordability.
Mr. Abbott made Ms. Hinojosa’s liberal legislative record a point of attack. In ads, paid for with Mr. Abbott’s massive campaign war chest, he brought up her past support for transgender rights and opposition to enshrining the state’s income tax ban in the Texas Constitution, which Mr. Abbott argued was akin to a vote for tax increases.
Ms. Hinojosa criticized Mr. Abbott over his past support for the state’s proliferating data centers, and made the argument that Republicans, who have controlled every branch of state government for more than 20 years, were not putting everyday Texans and their needs first.
As the state’s first Democratic governor since Ann Richards left office in 1995, Ms. Hinojosa will have to expend significant energy unwinding the many threads of power woven into place by Republicans during their decades in power. She will face her first real challenge — how to work with, and against, the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature — as soon as she takes the oath of office in January.
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