Those who have attended a Houston ISD school board meeting in the past few months might think Gina Hinojosa is running for a trustee position by the way that speakers reference the importance of her campaign to the future of the district and its students.
At a press conference Tuesday at Pyburn’s Farm Fresh Foods in Houston, Hinojosa confirmed that she is, in fact, seeking to unseat three-term Gov. Greg Abbott in November, and she’s absolutely campaigning on education issues. It’s the reason she got into politics, she said.
The Austin Democrat and daughter of former Cameron County Judge and longtime Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa was elected to the Austin ISD school board in 2012. She says she ran for office because state budget cuts threatened to close her son’s elementary school and she was motivated to protect public education. She was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 2016.
During her time in office, Hinojosa has been one of the most outspoken critics of the state takeover of HISD, which occurred in 2023 in an effort to raise student test scores. TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, an Abbott appointee, installed Mike Miles as superintendent. The district is governed by an state-appointed board of managers.
On Tuesday, Hinojosa told the Houston Press that Morath should be polishing up his resume.
“When I’m governor, I will fire Mike Morath and put an educator in the position of Texas Education Agency commissioner,” she said. “I will give the school district back to the people of Houston.”
The candidate has proposed eliminating state takeovers, saying they undermine local democracy. Since the early 1990s, the TEA has taken over roughly 15 school districts, but the pace has accelerated in recent years after lawmakers expanded the agency’s authority in 2015 and 2017. Eight districts are currently governed by state-appointed boards of managers, the highest number in recent history.
“Houston is a community that has fought long and hard for its neighborhood public schools and Greg Abbott has taken that control away from communities,” Hinojosa said. “Even when our schools are struggling, it is never the right answer to take schools away from their parents and community who know best, who have skin in the game in how students achieve.”
Hinojosa also doesn’t like Miles’ controversial New Education System, saying it has centralized control and reduced input from educators and families. NES schools require scripted lessons from the central office that critics say can’t be adapted to individual students’ needs, and daily timed quizzes.
Last month, Hinojosa launched Team Texas Public Schools, a bipartisan organizing program designed to coach and engage parents, teachers, and administrators to fight school closures across the state. The initiative includes plans to restore local control to districts under a state takeover, ending A-F accountability ratings in their current form and opposing the private school voucher expansion.
Abbott on Tuesday announced the formation of the Texas Classroom Commission, a group of current and retired public school teachers who are tasked with delivering recommendations for improvement before the 90th Legislative Session begins in January. An April poll from Slingshot Strategies shows Abbott leading Hinojosa 48 percent to 43 percent among likely voters.
Gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa talks to voters at a Houston grocery store on Tuesday. Credit: April Towery
But Hinojosa’s visit to Houston this week wasn’t about HISD or the state takeover. The candidate was launching a three-city tour to discuss her economic policy platform, a plan to tap the state’s underutilized $27 billion rainy day fund to send $1,500 to each Texas household. The candidate referred to her offer as “corruption tax refund checks to provide relief for working families and account for the cost of Greg Abbott’s corruption.”
The rainy day account, also known as the economic stabilization fund, is “so full it’s overflowing,” Hinojosa said. “It is being hoarded irresponsibly, and let’s remember it includes money that was supposed to go to schools in 2023, when Greg Abbott withheld education money to pass his voucher scam.”
Union members who attended Tuesday’s event to support Hinojosa were asked what they would do with $1,500. “Probably go grocery shopping,” one said. Hinojosa said Texas ranks among the highest in residents who can’t afford health insurance or electric bills and have filed for bankruptcy. She noted that plasma centers are opening in middle-class neighborhoods because the demand is so high among people who need a few extra dollars in their bank accounts.
The grocery store stop was one of three campaign events Hinojosa has planned in Houston this week before visits to San Antonio and Laredo. When asked why Houston is so important to her, she acknowledged that Harris County has a lot of voters and her opponent has pledged to spend millions in the area to turn the community “dark red.”
“It’s important to reach out to Houston voters, but we’re in every community,” Hinojosa said. “We’re here a lot, but we are everywhere.”
At the Democratic Party state convention in Corpus Christi last month, Hinojosa shared a similar sentiment, saying she wasn’t running to be the governor for the Democrats but rather for all Texans.
“There is one fight that unites us all,” she said from the stage on June 26. “It is the only fight that matters in 2026. It is the one fight to decide the question of our time: Is this the Texas that is by and for the people or is this great state the billionaires’ world and we just live here?”
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