Before becoming a state legislator, Hinojosa was a labor and civil rights lawyer. She worked for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and for the law firm of Kator, Parks & Weiser. In 2005, she was part of the legal team that sued U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. She was also a member of the Austin Independent School District's school board and has worked part-time for Catholic Charities USA, Texas Rural Legal Aid, and the Equal Justice Center.
Hinojosa was elected governor of Texas in the 2026 election, defeating incumbent Republican governor Greg Abbott and becoming the first Democrat to be elected governor of Texas since Ann Richards in 1990.
Early life, education, and career
Regina Inez Hinojosa was born on December 8, 1973, in McAllen, Texas. She is the daughter of politician Gilberto Hinojosa, a former chair of the Texas Democratic Party, and Crisanta Guerra Lozano, a legal aid attorney. She is of Mexican descent.
Hinojosa grew up in Brownsville and spent summers with her grandparents in Mission. After graduating from Homer Hanna High School in 1992, she obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Plan II Honors and Government from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996. She then earned a Juris Doctor from George Washington University Law School in 1999. She spent one semester at the University of Texas School of Law, where she met her husband.
Hinojosa started her career representing union members as a civil rights lawyer. In 2012, when Pease Elementary School, which her son attended, was under threat of closure, she ran for and was elected to the school board in the Austin Independent School District. After winning her election, she worked to keep the campus open and ultimately succeeded. She served on the school board until her election to the Texas House of Representatives in 2016.
Texas House of Representatives
2017
In the 85th Texas Legislature, Hinojosa proposed directing $3 million to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to help trafficking victims receive necessary services. The proposal passed the House 113 to 32, but was stripped from the budget during negotiations with the Senate.
2019
At an organizing campaign for the Healthy Texas Act of 2019, Hinojosa pledged to introduce legislation to provide every Texas resident with comprehensive healthcare services. The bill was considered in committee, but did not move forward. During the 86th Texas Legislature, Hinojosa also authored HB 1307, which established a system allowing individuals impacted by disasters to apply for assistance. The bill was signed into law.
2021
During the 87th Texas Legislature, Hinojosa filed House Bill 73, which would have prohibited the use of the gay and trans panic defense. Under the panic defense, criminal penalties for assault and murder can be lessened or eliminated if the perpetrator claims they lost control and acted violently in response to the victim's sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill was rejected by the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence.
In July 2021, Democratic members of the Texas House, including Hinojosa, left the state in an effort to prevent the passage of voting restriction legislation, which would ban drive-thru and 24-hour voting, prohibit local election officials from distributing unrequested mail-in ballot applications, and grant partisan poll watchers unrestricted movement at voting sites, among other changes. Although the bill eventually passed, provisions that would have made it easier for judges to overturn election results and prohibited early morning voting on Sundays (potentially impeding Black churches' post-service voting tradition) were eliminated.
2023
During the 88th Texas Legislature, Hinojosa authored the Fully Fund Our Future Act. The bill would have invested 40 billion dollars into the Texas public school system, providing teachers with a $15,000 raise and school support staff with a $5,500 raise, increasing per-student funding from $6,160 to $8,947, and allocating an additional $2 billion for special education services. However, Texas Governor Greg Abbott stated that he would not permit increasing public education funding or providing teacher pay raises unless school voucher legislation passed. As a result, public school districts did not receive additional state funding in 2023.
2025
In February 2025, Hinojosa posted a link to an interactive website where users could learn how much money local school districts would lose as a result of school voucher legislation. Governor Abbott, who had designated the passage of school vouchers as his first priority of the session, stated that Democrats either don't understand the legislation "or they lie about it." Hinojosa responded, "Call me a liar to my face," in a post accompanied by a video offering to educate the governor on school finance.
In August 2025, Hinojosa was one of the 51 Democratic members of the Texas House who left the state to participate in the quorum bust in order to delay the passage of new congressional maps. While she was absent from the state, Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit to attempt to remove Hinojosa, along with a dozen other representatives, from office by declaring their seats vacant. The members ultimately returned to the state before the Texas Supreme Court could issue a ruling, and the maps passed through the legislature, triggering a nationwide cycle of redistricting. In May 2026, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction in the legislative dispute and dismissed the case against the absent members.
Governor of Texas
2026 election
Hinojosa announced her candidacy for governor in the 2026 election on October 15, 2025. Her opponents in the Democratic primary included former Representative and 2006 gubernatorial nominee Chris Bell. On March 3, 2026, she won the primary with 59.9 percent of the vote.
From July 1 to September 24, 2026, Hinojosa's campaign raised more than $13 million and had $4 million in the bank at the end of that period. Abbott raised more than $20 million over the same weeks and finished with $18.2 million on hand.
Abbott did not debate Hinojosa. He turned down invitations from four Texas news outlets. On October 15, Hinojosa held an event at an empty lectern outside the Governor's Mansion in Austin.
In the general election, Hinojosa was endorsed by Texas AFL-CIO and by the editorial boards of the Houston Chronicle. She was also endorsed by EMILY's List and the Texas State Teachers Association.
Hinojosa defeated Abbott in what was widely considered an upset. Cook Political Report rated the election "lean Republican". USA Today reported that Hinojosa was considered a "longshot", while Associated Press said she was an "underdog" candidate, who "did not have significant support from the national [Democratic] party for her campaign." Hinojosa campaigned as a populist, focused on issues such as anti-corruption, education, cost of living, and opposing AI data centers, while dismissing accusations that she had been "too woke" on cultural issues.
During the campaign, Hinojosa had anticipated that if she won, she would have faced a Republican-dominated state legislature. She had expected to use the governor's seat as a bully pulpit, and had said, "Even if I win, we still have Republican control of everything in this state. ... My agenda will be one that 99 percent of us agree on, which is to secure the American dream, to save Texas public schools, put money in your pocket — a populist agenda, rather than fight fights that I know I can't win." Democrats unexpectedly gained control of the Texas House of Representatives, though not the Texas Senate. In her victory speech, Hinojosa stated, "This governor's office does not belong to me, it does not belong to my party. We did not end one era of single party rule just to usher in another. ... It belongs to Texas."
Hinojosa ended a long-running streak of Republican governors and became the first Democrat to win the governorship in 36 years. Hinojosa will also become the state's first Latina governor.
Tenure
Hinojosa will assume office on January 20, 2027.
Political positions
Artificial intelligence
Hinojosa has supported more guardrails on artificial intelligence (AI). She said, "The federal government has failed to lead on this issue, and we cannot trust the billionaires profiting off of AI to self-regulate." In a September 2026 interview, she stated she would support a requirement that a verified "kill switch" be included for advanced AI systems, establishing AI capability control.
Data centers
Opposition to data centers was a central pillar of Hinojosa's 2026 campaign. She criticized Abbott for promoting Texas as the "epicenter" of the AI industry and for granting tax breaks for data center construction, which she said led to the Texas state government "losing more than a billion dollars a year" in revenue. She called for a moratorium on the construction of data centers in Texas, saying that data centers "are owned by the richest men in the world. We're all footing the bill. There are no rules." She also called for more guardrails on water and electricity use by existing data centers, saying, "There's no protections for people to have a seat at the table to decide if and how they come into their communities. There is no protection for water or electricity costs."
Cost of living
Hinojosa pitched her campaign on affordability, saying she wants to put money back in Texans' pocket. She has also called for freezing residential electricity rates. Under her plan, the Public Utility Commission would hold rates in place until state law required data centers and other power users to cover their own costs. She has also proposed one-time $1,500 refund checks for every Texas household, paid from the state's Rainy Day Fund. On housing, she filed HB 2334 in 2025 to restrict investment firms from buying single-family homes. The bill was referred to committee and did not advance.
Education
Hinojosa has advocated for an end to the Texas school voucher program, which was signed into law by Abbott in 2025 and allows taxpayer funds to be used for private education. Hinojosa criticized the voucher program as subsidizing private school tuition for wealthy families, while public schools across Texas have shut down, shifted to a four-day schedule, or experienced teacher shortages.
Hinojosa has been a vocal opponent of the state's current academic testing regimen for children and has advocated for an end to the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) tests. She has criticized state takeovers of local school districts, saying that "even when our schools are struggling, it is never the right answer to take schools away from their parents and community who know best." If elected as governor, she has promised to replace the Commissioner of the Texas Education Agency Mike Morath, who has overseen the recent takeovers of Houston ISD, Fort Worth ISD, Beaumont ISD and Lake Worth ISD.
In September 2026, she expressed her opposition to the widespread use of AI tools in education for young children.
Taxation
Hinojosa supports the suspension of the Texas state gas tax as a way to ease rising fuel prices caused by the 2026 Iran war. Campaigning as a candidate for governor, Hinojosa proposed sending a $1,500 rebate check to every Texas household from the state's Economic Stabilization Fund, which she called a "corruption tax refund." She stated she wants to lower, and ultimately eliminate, property taxes for homeowners by cutting corporate subsidies and "corrupt" government contracts.
Immigration and border security
Hinojosa previously worked for the Office of Immigrant Concerns at Catholic Charities USA.
In November 2023, Hinojosa voted against Senate Bill 3, which funded border barrier construction and border security operations, and against Senate Bill 4, which created a state crime of illegal entry. In an October 2025 interview, she said she supports securing the border and that law-abiding immigrants with roots in their communities despite having no legal status need "some kind of path to be here legally." She also called state spending on Operation Lone Star a misappropriation of taxpayer money.
Hinojosa has criticized federal immigration enforcement in Texas, saying ICE acts with "lethal lawlessness." She has called for investigations into shootings by federal immigration agents, including the March 2025 death of Ruben Ray Martinez on South Padre Island, and the July 2026 death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, after which she asked for body camera footage and an investigation involving the Texas Rangers.
LGBTQ rights
Hinojosa has advocated for increased legal protections for LGBTQ Texans. In 2021, Hinojosa filed legislation to ban the gay and trans panic defense statewide, which did not become law. In May 2021, Hinojosa waved a transgender flag with the Texas House's LGBTQ Caucus in opposition to restrictions on transgender student athletes. Hinojosa said in a May 2022 interview that she had "spent a lot of time" intervening in Abbott's efforts to conduct Child Protective Services investigations into the families of trans youth.
During the 2026 Texas gubernatorial election, Hinojosa released an advertisement jokingly stating her "pronouns are Mom, Texan, and soon-to-be Governor", in response to an anti-trans ad from the Abbott campaign which referred to her as "gender-bender Gina". Hinojosa's ad sparked criticism from some trans voters.
External links
Campaign website
State legislative page
Texas Tribune profile
Appearances on C-SPAN
Profile at Vote Smart
