Gina Hinojosa Calls Greg Abbott Out of Hiding

Out in the great state of Texas, the autumn air is supposed to bring high school football, county fairs, and the spectacle of politicians barking at each other like yard dogs over who loves pickup trucks more. But this October, our venerable governor, Greg Abbott, seems to have developed a sudden, delicate case of stage fright. After more than thirty years drawing a state paycheck, Abbott has decided that the sight of a live television camera is simply too hazardous for his health—at least if state Representative Gina Hinojosa is standing anywhere near it.

For weeks now, the good people at Hearst Newspapers and NBCUniversal have been waving a polite invitation for a live, one-hour debate scheduled for October 15 in Fort Worth. Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee who currently represents Austin in the Texas House, accepted the invitation without batting an eye, just as she did back in September when KXAN-TV and Nexstar put out a similar offer. But over at the governor’s mansion, the phone has apparently been yanked out of the wall. Abbott’s campaign simply ignored the invitation, hoping that if they kept completely still, the election might blow over like a tumbleweed.

Hinojosa, however, is not the type to let a governor scuttle under the porch. On October 8 in San Antonio, she called a press conference and laid her cards on the table. If Abbott refuses to get on a stage in Fort Worth, she said, she will pack up her podium, drive up to Austin on October 15, and set up shop directly on the public sidewalk outside the governor’s mansion at 1010 Colorado Street. I will come to him. Please stop hiding from the voters, Hinojosa said. The people of Texas deserve to hear my plan for Texas versus his record for Texas. And then she delivered the kind of unvarnished jab that causes campaign consultants to spit out their iced tea: Voters will hear my plan for Texas and know that their governor, Greg Abbott, is not man enough to debate.

Now, to understand why a man who has held statewide office since 1995 is suddenly sweating through his monogrammed cuffs, you have to look at the numbers. Texas Republicans have spent thirty-two years treating statewide elections like a private family barbecue. No Democrat has won a statewide office here since 1994. In 2022, Abbott swatted away Beto O’Rourke by nearly eleven percentage points. In fact, Abbott showed up to debate Wendy Davis in 2014, Lupe Valdez in 2018, and O’Rourke in 2022. He was more than happy to stand in front of the cameras when he held a double-digit lead and an ocean of cash.

Things look a little less comfortable this cycle. On October 8, a UMass Lowell and YouGov survey of 850 likely Texas voters put Abbott at 48 percent and Hinojosa at 44 percent, with 6 percent undecided and 1 percent backing Libertarian Pat Dixon. That four-point gap sits squarely inside the poll’s 4.5 percentage-point margin of error. Earlier in October, a New York Times and Siena College poll had Hinojosa leading by three percentage points, while a YouGov poll conducted between September 28 and October 5 had her ahead 48 percent to 47 percent. In that same UMass Lowell poll, the concurrent US Senate contest between Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democratic state Representative James Talarico was deadlocked at 45 percent apiece. As John Cluverius, the director of survey research for the Center for Public Opinion at UMass Lowell, put it: Neither of the premier statewide races has a clear leader. Texas, a once-reliable rock, is starting to show some cracks.

When a fortress starts showing cracks, the folks inside generally prefer to pull up the drawbridge. Abbott’s campaign spokesperson, Eduardo Leal, tried to wave away the numbers with an airy email statement: We don’t comment on polls, but we know that Governor Abbott’s vision will beat high-tax Hinojosa. Abbott himself took shelter at a friendly law enforcement gathering in Tarrant County, declaring, I don’t know of any legislator in Austin, Texas, who’s more hostile to law enforcement than Gina Hinojosa.

That is the traditional Texas GOP playbook: slap a scary nickname on your opponent, throw out a slogan, and hope nobody checks the kitchen table. But Texas voters have been sitting at that kitchen table, staring at their bills. Under Abbott’s watch, Texas homeowners pay the sixth-highest property taxes in the entire country. Working parents are watching their neighborhood public schools get squeezed bone-dry while Abbott pushes private-school vouchers and hands lavish tax abatements to massive corporations. As Hinojosa observed: Greg Abbott has spent 12 years showing us what he thinks Texans deserve: more data centers, fewer schools and endless contracts for his billionaire donors to get rich off our tax dollars.

Hinojosa comes out of that exact fight. An attorney and former president of the Austin Independent School District board, she first stepped into the legislative ring to stop the state from shuttering neighborhood schools. If elected, she would be the first Latina governor in Texas history. Her platform aims squarely at shifting tax burdens away from residential homeowners and back onto corporate giants, which has prompted Abbott allies such as state Senator Paul Bettencourt to cry foul and warn of an unbearable tax war. God forbid corporate balance sheets should carry the load that regular homeowners have carried for a generation.

Naturally, the money behind this brawl reflects the divide. Abbott pulled in a staggering $91.5 million from early 2025 through late September 2026, relying on a tight crew of roughly 117,000 donors who cut checks averaging $784. His roster of benefactors features big-money oilmen, developers, and tech executives like S. Javaid Anwar, Kenneth Fisher, Alex Fairly, Joe Gebbia, and Edward Roski. Abbott burned through cash so fast over the summer—outspending Hinojosa by ten to one—that his bank account shriveled from $105.7 million down to $18.2 million on hand.

Hinojosa, meanwhile, raised $21.7 million through late September, bringing in more than $13 million between July and September from nearly 437,000 separate contributions. Those checks averaged fifty dollars, buoyed by the American Federation of Teachers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. In early October, national allies took notice: Illinois Governor JB Pritzker chipped in $1.2 million, remarking that there’s been not enough attention on her race, while the Democratic Governors Association pledged another $1 million. Hinojosa entered October with $4 million on hand—scrappy money compared to the governor’s vault, but fueled by people who actually vote rather than people who buy private jets.

If Abbott thinks he can hide out in the mansion until early voting begins, Hinojosa has called his bluff. Showing up on Colorado Street with an open microphone is precisely the kind of trouble Texans ought to appreciate. Politics does not belong to the men in leather chairs who write eight-figure checks; it belongs to the people who pay the taxes and mop the school floors. If the governor will not face the voters on a television stage, he can listen to them out on his front lawn. It is high time to raise some hell.