In the second episode of “What’s Popular?”, The Root publisher Ashley Allison sat down over lunch at Winsome Prime in Houston with Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor. With the election a couple of weeks away, Hinojosa described the race as a dead heat that will come down to turnout.
Allison didn’t ease in. She noted that Black voters showed up for progressives in 2024, that some Latino voters backed Donald Trump, and that tension between the two communities is real. Then she asked Hinojosa, as a Latina, why Black Texans should support her.
“There is no electability without the African-American vote,” Hinojosa said. She told Allison she’s engaging Black communities “not because I’m doing you any favors but because I need you.”
To back that up, she pointed to her record. In 2021, she organized the Texas House quorum break to fight a bill that would have banned Sunday morning voting, a key moment for Souls to the Polls. She said Black pastors were among her best allies and that the bill’s most controversial provisions were dropped under the pressure.
The conversation moved through the issues she’s running on:
- Schools: She called Greg Abbott’s billion-dollar voucher program a betrayal of public education and said 150 districts have moved to four-day weeks.
- Housing: She said private equity buying up middle-income homes is putting ownership out of reach for too many Texans.
- Public safety: She wants private prisons out of the system and more reintegration programs, and she called Texas’s mental health system broken.
- ICE: She said federal agents should meet the same accountability standards as Texas law enforcement, such as body cameras and dash cams.
- Data centers: She’d call for a moratorium until laws give communities a say in whether and how they move in.
Allison closed by asking what Black voters could say a year from now if Hinojosa is elected as the state’s first Latina governor. “They’ll be able to say that’s my governor,” she answered.
Gov. Greg Abbott is seeking a fourth term. His signature education policy involves school vouchers; he pushed the Legislature to approve $10,000 private school tuition vouchers, backed by about $1 billion in state funds.
Supporters say vouchers help students, including many Black and Latino children, leave struggling districts for better-resourced private schools, while critics say the program mainly benefits wealthier families and pulls money from public districts.
Early data shows 58% of recipients were already in private school or homeschooled, while Black students were overrepresented compared to their share of the population. Polling has found 68% of Black Texas voters oppose legislation that would use tax dollars to provide school vouchers to all Texas parents. Abbott has also sought to end state funding for diversity programs in K-12 schools. He has declined to debate Hinojosa this cycle.
