Hinojosa Marks 61 Years of the VRA: “The Fate of the Union Depends on Texas”

Hinojosa: “When an election is decided before a single ballot is cast, it does not matter which party you belong to. We all lose. We stop being America.”

Houston, TX – Yesterday, Democratic nominee for Texas Governor Gina Hinojosa delivered remarks on the critical stakes of the 2026 election. Speaking in Houston – where Greg Abbott’s extreme gerrymandering has silenced the voices of hundreds of thousands of Texans – Hinojosa honored the 61st anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and outlined how the race for Texas Governor will decide the balance of power in the U.S. Congress.

WATCH HINOJOSA’S FULL ADDRESS.

With the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act, Hinojosa cautioned that Texas Republicans are already preparing to redraw the maps and tighten their grip on power next year.

“Greg Abbott started a race to the bottom in this country in which political leaders now maximize their advantage to game the system for fear of being outgunned,” Hinojosa said. “He is making a mockery of our elections and disrespecting the people.”

“A rigged map still has to land on the governor’s desk. The governor of Texas can veto it,” Hinojosa added. “That makes this office the last line standing between one party and permanent control of the country, and it makes this race the most important in America. Texas needs a governor who will veto rigged maps. I will be that governor.”

Full Speech:

Today, I’m here to talk about General Burl Newsome. He shipped out to the Pacific Theater during World War II, believing in the promise of America. He fought for that promise abroad and returned home to East Texas. In the 1950s, he stood in line to vote in a state that did everything in its power to turn him away.

He knew what that ballot had cost. He knew that people paid for that ballot at the end of a fire hose. They paid for that ballot on a bridge at Selma. They paid at churches that were burnt to the ground. 

He never treated that ballot like a piece of paper. No. He treated it like a receipt. And tomorrow is the anniversary of the law that decided his vote was as sacred as anyone’s. 

The Voting Rights Act, the signature piece of legislation signed into law by a great president from Texas, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who knew that it was foundational to our basic freedoms.

LBJ said the right to vote is the basic right, without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, as individuals, control over their destinies. Before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the promise in those words had gone unkept for centuries, and it was Black Americans, ultimately, who carried the cost of finally keeping it. But what they won became the inheritance of every American.

You can see that inheritance here in Texas. You can see that inheritance in this room. It is the reason Barbara Jordan went to Congress. The Voting Rights Act put Black voters in Houston on the rolls in numbers the state had never allowed before, and it sent Black Texans to the state House for the first time in generations. And one of them is here today, our living legend, an icon, Representative Senfronia Thompson, who is Dean of the House!

Barbara Jordan was also one of those Texans when Texas redrew congressional maps in the 1970s. After the census, she helped draw the new Houston district. She ran for it. She won it. She became the first black Texan ever elected to the United States Congress. And the first black woman sent to Congress from a southern state.

The Voting Rights Act stands behind the students at Prairie View A&M. Students who have gone to court again and again, decade after decade, insisting that democracy has room for them. The Voting Rights Act gives them the power to keep insisting. 

The Voting Rights Act stands behind Latinos in South Texas. When their power grew at the ballot box, the state redrew maps to take it. They sued, and the US Supreme Court decided they were right. The state had taken their power because they were about to use it. So new maps were drawn, and the people of South Texas elected the candidate of their choosing, not of the party’s choosing. When they wanted a Democrat, they elected a Democrat. And when they wanted a Republican, don’t we know, they elected a Republican.

The Voting Rights Act never guaranteed victory to anyone. It guaranteed the right of the people to decide. That is the oldest idea there is in America. 

When that right is defended, ordinary lives change because nothing good in this country ever came from powerful people waking up one morning deciding they felt generous that morning. It came because we had the votes. 

The eight-hour workday came because we had the votes. Social Security came because they had the votes. Medicare came because we had the votes. The lights came on in the Hill Country with electrification because we had the votes. First, we won the vote, and then we won better lives.

That is what is on the ballot. That is what is on the ballot today. Whether your child’s school gets investment or whether it gets shut down, whether the data centers guzzle up all your water so that the rich can get richer. Whether a young couple can afford their first home, or whether working two jobs still isn’t good enough.

When people lose their say at the ballot box, they don’t just lose an election; they lose leverage. Leverage to make their lives better, and someone else picks it up.

Protecting the right to vote has never been separate from empowering working people. They are the same fight because again, the ballot is not a piece of paper; it is a receipt. It is proof that the government belongs to us.

That is why, throughout history, whenever somebody wanted to hold on to power that they could not earn, they started with your vote, and the story always goes the same. We heard the congressman talk about it first. They make it harder to vote. Then they choose their voters. They redraw lines. Modern-day Texas used that same playbook in 2021.

Republicans in the Senate passed a law to actually ban Sunday morning voting. They did. They did it to target black churches and a long-standing tradition of Souls to the Polls, where people went after services to vote as a faith community. That same bill also gave elected judges the power to overturn election results, to overturn the will of the people.

I organized the first quorum break in almost 20 years, and we – thank you. I want all my house members who were with me, who made that happen, to stand up, and let’s get them a round of applause.

Because we blocked that power grab. But when we returned, they redrew maps to escape consequences for their actions. And then, because Trump wanted more safeguards in an economy that had turned down. He called on Greg Abbott to redraw maps again last year. Greg Abbott obeyed. He started a race to the bottom in this country, in which political leaders now maximize their advantage to game the system for fear of being outgunned.

He has made a mockery of our elections, and he has disrespected the people.

They make elections less competitive. So then they stop listening because they no longer have to. And once politicians stop fearing the people, they stop working for them. And that is what we see today in Texas. For too long, though, for too long, it has been mostly Black leaders who have been sounding the alarm about the voting rights being gutted.

Every American should be standing with them.

Because the Voting Rights Act was never a protection for just some of us. It protects every American’s vote. It protects our elections from being rigged. And now, after the recent Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act, there are no protections; there are no rules. And Republicans in Austin have already told us what comes next. Next year, they will slice and dice Texas, drawing new maps to eliminate five Democrats in Congress.

Two years later, Texas will gain another five seats in Congress through the census. Because we are growing faster than the other states, we will take congressional seats from other states. When that happens, if the same Austin Republicans are still in power, they will redraw those seats for themselves.

Erase ten Democratic seats from Congress, and it is over. There is no Democratic control of Congress. Not in this next election cycle. Likely not for a generation. Texas becomes too big. The math no longer works.

Let that sink in. When an election is decided before a single ballot is cast, no matter which party you belong to, we all lose. We are no longer America.

But a risk map still has to make its way to the governor’s desk.

The governor of Texas can veto it.

That makes this office the last line standing between one party and permanent control of Congress. And it makes this race the most important in America.

Texas needs a governor who will veto rigged maps, whether they are rigged for Republicans or rigged for Democrats. And I will be that governor.

It is why every American should care about Texas, because the fate of the Union depends on Texas. That’s right. I know that we have been told to expect less of our politics, that nothing changes. But that only happens if we let it. It only happens if we give up and if we give in. And that is not Texas.

I know that Texans are stubborn enough to believe that if you show up, if you work hard, if you fight, you should have a say in your future.

General Newsom believed in this country before it gave him a reason to. He held his ballot like the receipt that it was. For a promise that America was still learning to keep. That promise is ours to keep now. 

And it comes down to one question: Who does Texas belong to? I say it belongs to us.

And I say, in November we prove it.

Thank you. Thank you so much. We can only do this without everybody being all in. And so I want to thank everybody for being here today with me.

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