NEW: Gina Hinojosa’s Full Speech from Texas Democratic Convention
Hinojosa: “The American Dream is ours for the taking because Texas is a world economic powerhouse, and it is the people of Texas who built that power. But the thing about power: no one is going to give it to us. We have to take it back.”
Corpus Christi, TX – This evening, Democratic nominee for Texas Governor, Gina Hinojosa, delivered remarks at the Texas Democratic Convention, outlining her vision to revive the American Dream for working Texans and take on the Greg Abbott Corruption Tax.
In her speech, Hinojosa drove home the fight that defines this election for Texas and our country: “Are we going to be a Texas by and for the people? Or is this great state the billionaires’ world, and the rest of us just live here?”
“Greg Abbott is tearing us apart with our differences because he knows and he fears the truth: together, we can take back corporate power and return that power and opportunity to the people of Texas,” Hinojosa said. “I will save Texas schools and put money in your pocket. If we are disciplined, this is a fight we can win.”
Read Hinojosa’s full remarks below.
I am running to be the next Governor of Texas. And I am running to win.
I grew up in this party, and I have deep relationships and friendships here. You have always been there for me – and for the good fight – and for that I am forever grateful.
At the same time, I am not running to be the Governor for Democrats. I am running to be Governor for the people of Texas. For all the people of Texas.
Because there is one fight that unites us all, and it is the only fight that matters in 2026. It is THE fight to decide the. Question. Of. Our. Time:
“Are we going to be a Texas by and for the people? Or is this great state the billionaires’ world, and the rest of us just live here?”
That is the one fight in America, and the one fight for Texas.
I was born and raised in a Texas that radiated opportunity. I grew up fully trusting, fully knowing, that I could be anything I wanted to be in Texas if I did my part. If I put in the work.
My earliest memory of the words that named that opportunity came from my father, on a weekend trip home from Matamoros, Mexico, to Brownsville, where I grew up in the Rio Grande Valley. (Where my Valley people?)
I remember seeing through the eyes of a child extreme poverty and begging in Mexico, and as a little girl, I remember being confused and upset by it. I asked my dad why: “Why, in Mexico, were people begging on the streets, and not in Texas?”
He said to me, “In Mexico, there are the rich and the poor and not much in between.” Then he said, “Here, at home; at home, we have a strong middle class.”
What my dad was proudly proclaiming was the American Dream.
Do you remember the American Dream?
The American Dream was the promise that if you worked hard at a full-time job, you could afford a good life. Buy a home. Send your kids to a good school down the street. Put food on the table without doing the math twice. Take a vacation, and retire with dignity.
You did your part, and Texas did its part. That was the promise; that was the deal.
Securing that deal was the work of the Democratic Party. We have iconic, heroic examples. FDR’s New Deal made homeownership a reality for millions of Americans, creating middle-class wealth in this country. FDR gave working people the right to unionize, raising wages and benefits for millions of working people. LBJ prioritized opportunity for all through public schools that leveled the playing field for all children. These were historic wins that created opportunity that built the middle class. These were our proudest days as Democrats. These were our defining days as Democrats.
But we have lost the plot. I will say it plainly, because somebody in our party has to.
We’ve lost our way because of a corrupt political system where corporate actors and lobbyists have unlimited money to influence politicians. In. Both. Parties. The result is that global corporate power has grown at the expense of opportunity for working Texans.
Then we let the other side set the terms of the fight, and we showed up to argue it. We stepped into culture wars for a reason. We stand tall in our namesake, “Friend.” Because we know Black Texans built this state. Hispanic Texans were here before the border. Muslim Texans are Texans. Asian Texans came for the same dream my father named. We are right to stand with all Texans, no matter their race, color, or creed, and we always will.
Still, while we fought on Greg Abbott’s terms, he was emptying our pockets. Abbott was secretly taking our money to give to his donors, including a billion dollars in no-bid contracts.
But let me be clear that he also openly championed a trickle-down economic agenda for Texas, where success was defined as investment in global corporations, instead of investment in Texans, and too many Democrats in office went along. It is an establishment politics that has been descriptively named “the corporate uniparty.”
While Greg Abbott and Republican politicians who have been in charge for 30 years own this reality, Democrats must own our failure to name it and fight it. Somewhere along the way, we left the kitchen table behind.
Friends, that is on us. It was never complicated, and it is not complicated now. It is about your good-paying job, the school in your neighborhood, your tax bill that is 75% higher without anything to show for it.
And I am right here, right now putting that fight, the fight for the American Dream, back at the center. Back on the table. It is a fight for who we are and for who Texas belongs to. It is a fight that unites us, and it is a fight we can and must win.
Now, here is the truth about the man who has been in the governor’s mansion for 12 years and who has been in state office for 30 years – since I graduated high school. He is masterful at the sleight of hand. No one is better at it. With one hand, up here, he points to your neighbor, so you don’t see his other hand down here in your pocket.
So look down.
That money in your pocket didn’t just vanish. It went to Greg Abbott’s donors.
Greg Abbott built the biggest data center giveaway in the country. The richest men in the world, his donors, are running up your electric bill and guzzling your water, while you pay for it.
And now that I am running against him, he wants you to forget that he is the one who sold the farm for cheap, in a fire sale to his billionaire donors. No one believes the arsonist will actually put out the fire.
Greg Abbott also took a billion dollars a year from your neighborhood school for his voucher scam after receiving the largest campaign contribution in Texas history, $12 million, from an out-of-state billionaire with a financial interest in vouchers.
There is a name for what you have been paying. It is the Greg Abbott Corruption Tax. You pay it every single month.
You pay it when your electricity bill arrives, when your local school closes, when your grocery bills go up, and as LaTarsha reminded us: you pay it when you can’t get the care you already paid for and need to survive. All while Greg Abbott and his donors get richer.
While you paid out, he kept your eyes up and averted. A new scapegoat every week, so the only fight you ever see is the fight he picked, and never the money he picked from your pocket.
Greg Abbott is tearing us apart with our differences because he knows and he fears the truth: together, we can take back corporate power and return that power and opportunity to the people of Texas.
But I did not come here to talk about him. He is the problem. He is not the point. The point is the teacher who has to sell her plasma to pay her bills. The point is the crane operator who does the hard work in this state and cannot afford to get sick. They are the point. They are Texas. They put in Texas grit, and now they deserve the American Dream. We all do. That is our inheritance as Texans.
So my agenda is simple, and it is short, because the plan should be as plain as the promise.
Save Texas schools. Because there can be no American Dream without strong public schools. And put money in your pocket. Because if you cannot afford to live and thrive here, then the Dream is out of reach.
That is my agenda. That is my promise: I will save Texas schools and put money in your pocket. That is the work. Anything else takes our eye off the prize, and the prize is too precious to put off. We have already lost years.
But if we are focused, if we are disciplined, this is a fight we can win. The American Dream is ours for the taking. Because Texas is a world economic powerhouse. We rank among nations. And it is the people of Texas who built that power.
But the thing about power: no one is going to give it to us. We have to take it back.
That is why I am running: to take back that power. And I am running to win. But I need you in this with me like you’ve never been in it before, because in the last 25 years, the stakes have never been higher, and the opportunity to win has never been greater.
Join the fight with me at ginafortexas.com.
Because the American Dream is a real thing. It is a house with your name on the deed in Fort Worth. A porch light left on in McAllen. A healthy kid asleep down the hall in a room that is hers in El Paso. It is a place you do not have to leave to make a living. And it’s thriving schools in Austin, Tyler, Houston, Bastrop, Brownsville, and Brenham.
That is home. It’s time to take it back, Texas. Let’s come home.
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