Dallas Morning News: Hinojosa “tells Latino gathering their votes can topple Texas Republicans in November”

Hinojosa: “The Latino vote can be the difference if we choose to be this November.”

Fort Worth, TX – Today, Democratic nominee for Texas Governor, Gina Hinojosa, headlined the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) 97th annual national convention. Speaking to a gathering of more than 10,000 Latino delegates and leaders, Hinojosa highlighted the ways Greg Abbott has failed Latino voters “due to his close relationship with companies making money off private school vouchers and immigration detention centers,” according to the Dallas Morning News, and called Abbott “the mordida governor.” 

In her speech, Hinojosa drove home the importance of protecting Texas Latinos’ civil rights, and Greg Abbott’s “focus on cultural issues over the economic problems faced by Texans,” DMN wrote. Her convention appearance follows the launch of Team Texas Public Schools, a bipartisan initiative fighting back against Greg Abbott draining “critical resources from the free public education so many Texans, including Latinos, depend on,” the article added.

Polling consistently shows Hinojosa leading against Abbott among Latino voters, with the latest UnidosUS poll showing her winning Latinos by 27%. Across Texas, three in four Latino voters are concerned about rising inflation and gas prices – costs Greg Abbott has owned for 12 years – and in every local election, they’re making it clear that they’re ready for change.

Read more below.

Dallas Morning News: Democrat Gina Hinojosa tells Latino gathering their votes can topple Texas Republicans in November

• Democrat Gina Hinojosa’s campaign to unseat Texas Gov. Greg Abbott swung through a gathering of the nation’s largest and oldest group of politically active Latinos on Thursday, firing up a Fort Worth crowd with a message of empowerment against corrupt government leaders.
• “There is one fight in America, in Texas, right now,” Hinojosa said. “Are we going to be a Texas that is by and for the people? Or is this the billionaires’ world and we just live in it? We have an opportunity to make that decision come November. The Latino vote can be the difference if we choose to be.”
• She called Abbott “the mordida governor,” and “the most corrupt governor in Texas history” due to his close relationship with people and companies making money off private school vouchers and immigration detention centers. Mordida is slang for “kickback” in Spanish.
• Hinojosa’s remarks opened a gathering of more than 10,000 Latino delegates, civic leaders, politicians and visitors from 44 states who were in Texas this week for the League of United Latin American Citizens 97th annual national convention. She also spoke to youth delegates at a private event on Wednesday evening.
• “We have to be so disciplined this year,” she said in her speech before 500 attendees. “If we put in the work, if we decide to be the difference that we need to be for ourselves and for our families and for our state, we will win.”
• In her speech during the convention’s opening session, Hinojosa invited the audience to join the public schools fight. But she spent most of her 11 minutes on stage driving home the message that the civil rights of Latinos were being oppressed by Abbott’s border policies, as well as his focus on cultural issues over the economic problems faced by Texans.
• “What is happening right now, the attacks on our families, on our communities, on our small businesses, is not making us more safe – it is making us less safe,” she said. “It can feel like the leaders of this country and in Texas don’t like us. That they are anti-Latino. The truth is, it’s not that they hate us. It’s that they are using us. They are using us to make more money for themselves and their billionaire friends.”

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