Latino voters, data centers and Republican problems are giving Texas Democrats their highest hopes in 20 years

“Now what?” Gina Hinojosa asked, looking at the half-done house across the lot where the crew hadn’t shown up that morning.

Had the workers been pulled over? Would they come tomorrow? Were they just running late?

“Your guess,” said Ronnie Cavazos, the chairman of the South Texas Builders Alliance, as he led the Democratic nominee for governor on a brief tour of a neighborhood that had been in demand for new workers at Elon Musk’s SpaceX, “is as good as mine.”

Cavazos has a long list of problems his industry faces. Tariffs have driven up the price of timber and other materials . Immigration enforcement raids on work sites sent a much wider chill through a workforce worried about being indefinitely detained if they left their homes. Inflation drove up all costs, as did higher interest rates on lots that were left unfinished much longer. Then, there is the historic spike in diesel .

Standing on a foundation that hasn’t been built on since the concrete was poured 60 days earlier, Cavazos said he didn’t vote for President Donald Trump himself, but knows many who did two years ago, especially in these towns along the US-Mexico border where Latinos swung hard for the president in what many saw at the time as a sign of how lost the community was for Democrats.

The GOP has controlled all statewide offices in Texas for almost two decades. But a mix of economic factors, the national backlash to immigration raids and the growth of artificial intelligence, and the GOP nominating baggage-laden candidates who could offend moderate voters make this fall perhaps the likeliest chance for Democrats to break one-party control of the nation’s second-largest state.

“The difference is that we thought in the past we could win just based on how bad the other side was and the charisma of our side. And that’s not enough,” Hinojosa said, later that afternoon, sitting in the small café of an independent bookstore in Brownsville. “We have been given gifts in this campaign cycle in a perfect storm of things coming together. We have a strong coordinated effort in a way that we haven’t had in modern history, where we’re all working together seamlessly to make sure we get out the vote in the state.”

That coordination means Hinojosa occasionally appears with her colleague in the Texas House, Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico, who is in a tight Senate race with the scandal-plagued state attorney general, Ken Paxton. But mostly, they split up to cover more ground in the massive state, the first time in the 21st century that there has been more than one strong Democrat running statewide.

Barack Obama already made a surprise joint appearance at Taco Joint in Austin with both of them, and they in turn have both been featuring candidates for state legislature and other local offices at their own events, and Talarico is redirecting $600,000 of the massive national fundraising he’s been raking into local campaigns. For the first time since at least 1972 — that’s as far as the Texas Democratic Party’s records go back — Democrats are fielding candidates for every state legislature seat, many recruited in part by Beto O’Rourke’s Powered by People group, which has also already collected nearly 100,000 cellphone numbers as they’ve been registering and organizing primarily on college campuses.

“It’s nuts that this is happening in Texas,” O’Rourke told CNN while driving between stops. “But it’s happening for a reason.”

Then, just last week, the GOP candidate for state railroad commissioner posted a photo of brown-skinned students at a University of Texas football game and said the replacement of Americans by foreigners is “everywhere and far worse than any of us could imagine.” That post was seen as so racist by many Republicans that the famed GOP operative Karl Rove declared in an opinion piece , “This November, I’ll vote for only the second Democrat in my life.” (The first was former Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, the last Democrat to win a statewide race.)

But even the most enthusiastic Democrats working in the state admit that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s massive campaign account, combined with huge spending by groups allied with Trump and Musk, will make a breakthrough tough.

Every conversation about liberals getting their hopes up is haunted by memories of when those hopes were dashed, from Wendy Davis to O’Rourke to Colin Allred. But they also think that this year, they may have stumbled into actually making it happen.

Abbott last year backed Trump’s demands to redraw US House maps in part based on the Rio Grande Valley, the southernmost section of the state. Republicans bet that Latinos who helped deliver big wins for the president in all four of the region’s counties were voters they could count on when he wasn’t on the ballot.

A recent poll from the Texas Politics Project/University of Texas finds Latino voters in the state breaking negative on Trump, with 51% seeing him unfavorably to 41% favorably, after finding they evenly split on him at 48% each in October 2024. Those numbers reflect a larger national shift among Latinos against Trump and the GOP.

Voters here saw the surges of unauthorized migrant crossings that became an albatross first for former President Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris when the then-vice president took over his campaign. Those crossings have plummeted during Trump’s second term. But Democrats see opportunity to win this region back amid the economic headwinds and the sharp rise in immigrants without criminal records being arrested and deported.

Hinojosa’s campaign argues that if she and Talarico win the same percentage of the Latino vote that O’Rourke did in 2018 (and stays steady among other voters), that would be enough to win, given population growth and shifts.

Sen. Ruben Gallego, who campaigned with Hinojosa in the spring, said he sees similar possibilities among Latinos in Texas as when he won his Arizona seat in 2024 even as Trump also won his state.

“Don’t let preconceived notions and past performance make you think that will predict future performance. I really think that things are moving very fast in Texas,” Gallego said, adding that he’d tell skeptical Democratic leaders, “You’re mad about what happened with Latinos in 2024. A way to actually change that environment is to actually you know get good candidates, and we got you good candidates.”

Hinojosa never actively talks about possibly being the first Latina governor, even when pushed — but she regularly refers to what it would mean to be the first governor from the Valley, where she grew up and went to high school. Asked after her rally in Brownsville by a reporter what it was like being back home, she talked about how everywhere she went, people introduced themselves as lost cousins–and then switched into Spanish to answer the next question.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, the House Democrat trying to hold one of the seats that Republicans targeted in redistricting, has an ad in heavy rotation on local TV complaining about medications costing half as much as they do on the other side of the border. That ad targets people who regularly wait in traffic on the border bridges to get their prescriptions filled in towns like Matamoros or Progreso.

Bobby Pulido , the Tejano music star who entered politics to run against Republican Rep. Mónica de la Cruz, told CNN he is talking up shared conservative values and addressing the lowest per capita income region in the state. He joined forces early with Talarico and started doing more with Hinojosa as her campaign strengthened, including at a 2,500-person rally last month featuring all three in Beeville, located in a county where the population is 64% Latino and went 70% for Trump in the last election.

Appeals to Latinos won’t just shape 2026 in Texas and beyond, but the 2028 presidential election and even more so the 2032 race as population trends push the Electoral College further south.

“Latinos,” Pulido said, “are the enigma that neither Republicans or Democrats have been able to figure out.”

Still, this is a state Trump won by 14 points just two years ago, the largest margin for Republicans in the state since a few Obama aides came off his 2012 re-election promising to turn the state blue with a group called Battleground Texas — that soon all but disappeared — and where Abbott beat O’Rourke by 11 points four years ago.

With nearly $70 million in cash on hand reported earlier this summer, Abbott’s campaign is ramping up to knock on millions of doors and spend millions of dollars on ads.

Eduardo Leal, Abbott’s press secretary, did not make the governor available for an interview and declined to answer several questions about whether Abbott will debate Hinojosa or if he believes support for Trump is as the same levels as in 2024.

Abbott “has spent his time in office cutting taxes, controlling spending, and keeping more money in Texans’ pockets—helping make Texas one of the most affordable states in the country,” Leal said. “And he’s focused on doing even more to lower property taxes and the cost of housing, insurance, healthcare, electricity, and college. Gina Hinojosa offers the opposite: higher taxes and higher costs. She can use whatever campaign slogan she wants.”

In McAllen, at an outdoor bar called The Gremlin, Hinojosa asked the crowd to raise hands if they trusted government. No one did.

At a phone bank set up in a bike shop/coffee shop in Brownsville, she held her hand to her forehead as a woman at the end of the line told her about having to help pay her mother’s electricity bills while being so behind on interest payments for her property tax that she’s going to move into a trailer.

“You are not alone,” Hinojosa told her.

That evening, under the fake flowers and chandeliers of a quinceañera and wedding hall a windy 10-minute drive from the border, she leaned on another favorite line: “Is this going to be by and for the people, or is it the billionaires’ world and we just live here?”

“People voted for Trump because he said the system’s rigged. And people know that’s right. I know that that’s correct. Democrats have not been saying that. Democrats have been defending a system that is totally indefensible, a system that is working against us,” Hinojosa said. “Republicans have been in power, and so they are primarily to blame here, but there is blame to go around. To be able to acknowledge that, to see it and say it — this campaign, I realized just a couple of weeks ago, that’s what we’re about.”

It’s not just traditional supporters the campaign is counting on.

Lynn Davenport was at the Ellipse in Washington on January 6, 2021, until she left in the middle of Trump’s speech to get a hot dog and take a nap at her hotel, because, she said, she felt “he wasn’t saying anything.” By then, she’d gotten to know Hinojosa from seeing her fight school vouchers while on the state house education committee. Now she’s one of a contingent of MAHA and MAGA moms who have been drawn into Hinojosa’s campaign.

“I’m not switching to the Democratic Party,” Davenport told CNN. “I’ll probably just undervote from now on and go with the person.”

Clarissa Quintanilla, who’s 37 and in graduate school for civil engineering, came to see Hinojosa in McAllen and noted how many signs she’s seen both for Hinojosa and Talarico.

She acknowledged that the last few election cycles have been marked by Democratic hopes getting up and then getting dashed.

“Every time this happens,” she said. “This feels a little closer.”

“现在怎么办？”吉娜·希诺霍萨问道，她望着地对面那栋还没完工的房子，那天早上施工队还没来。

工人们是被警察拦下了吗？他们明天会来吗？还是只是迟到了？

“你的猜测，”南德克萨斯州建筑商联盟主席罗尼·卡瓦佐斯说道，他当时正带领民主党州长候选人短暂参观一个社区，该社区曾是埃隆·马斯克的SpaceX公司新员工的热门居住地，“和我的猜测一样好。”

卡瓦佐斯列举了他所在行业面临的诸多问题。关税推高了木材和其他材料的价格。移民执法部门突袭工地，令工人们忧心忡忡，担心一旦离开家就会被无限期拘留。通货膨胀推高了所有成本，而那些长期未完工的地块也面临着更高的利率。此外，柴油价格也出现了历史性的飙升。

卡瓦佐斯站在一块自 60 天前浇筑混凝土以来就未曾建造过的地基上，他说他本人没有投票给唐纳德·特朗普总统，但他认识很多两年前投票给他的人，尤其是在美墨边境的这些城镇，拉丁裔选民大力支持这位总统，当时许多人认为这表明该社区对民主党有多么失望。

共和党在德克萨斯州控制所有州级职位已近二十年。但经济因素、全国范围内对移民突袭和人工智能发展的强烈反对，以及共和党提名可能冒犯温和派选民的背负沉重包袱的候选人，使得今年秋季可能是民主党打破该州（美国第二大州）一党独大的局面的最可能机会。

“不同之处在于，过去我们认为只要对方实力太弱，再加上我们自身魅力十足就能获胜。但这还不够，”当天下午晚些时候，希诺霍萨坐在布朗斯维尔一家独立书店的小咖啡馆里说道。“这次竞选我们可谓是天时地利人和，各种因素完美结合。我们拥有现代史上前所未有的强大协调力量，所有人都在无缝协作，确保全州选民都能积极投票。”

这种协调意味着希诺霍萨偶尔会与她在德克萨斯州众议院的同事、民主党参议员候选人詹姆斯·塔拉里科一同露面。塔拉里科正与丑闻缠身的州检察长肯·帕克斯顿展开激烈的参议员竞选。但大多数时候，他们会分头行动，以便在这个幅员辽阔的州覆盖更广泛的选区。这是21世纪以来，德克萨斯州首次出现两位实力强劲的民主党候选人同时竞选全州范围的局面。

巴拉克·奥巴马已经与他们二人惊喜现身奥斯汀的Taco Joint餐厅。随后，他们两人都在各自的竞选活动中推介州议员和其他地方公职候选人。塔拉里科更是将他从全国范围内筹集到的巨额资金中的60万美元投入到地方竞选活动中。至少自1972年以来——这是德克萨斯州民主党有记录以来的最早年份——民主党首次为每个州议会席位都推出了候选人。许多候选人都是由贝托·奥鲁克的“人民力量”（Powered by People）组织招募的。该组织主要在大学校园进行登记和组织工作，目前已收集到近10万个手机号码。

“这事居然发生在德克萨斯州，真是太疯狂了，”奥鲁克在开车前往下一个目的地的途中告诉CNN。“但这事发生是有原因的。”

就在上周，共和党州铁路专员候选人发布了一张德克萨斯大学橄榄球赛上肤色较深的学生的照片，并声称美国人被外国人取代的现象“无处不在，而且比我们任何人想象的都要糟糕得多”。这条帖子被许多共和党人视为种族歧视言论，以至于著名的共和党活动家卡尔·罗夫在一篇评论文章中宣称：“今年11月，我将投票给我人生中第二个民主党候选人。”（第一个是前副州长鲍勃·布洛克，他是最后一位赢得全州选举的民主党人。）

但即使是该州最热情的民主党人也承认，共和党州长格雷格·阿博特庞大的竞选资金，再加上与特朗普和马斯克结盟的团体的大量支出，将使取得突破变得困难。

每当自由派人士燃起希望，总会想起那些希望破灭的往事，从温迪·戴维斯到奥鲁克再到科林·奥尔雷德，无一例外。但他们也认为，今年，他们或许真的有机会梦想成真。

去年，阿博特支持特朗普重新划分美国众议院选区的要求，部分依据是格兰德河谷地区，即该州最南端的区域。共和党人押注，在格兰德河谷的四个县都为特朗普赢得大选的拉丁裔选民，会在特朗普不参选时继续支持他。

德克萨斯政治项目/德克萨斯大学最近的一项民调显示，该州拉丁裔选民对特朗普的态度正在转为负面，51%的人对他持负面看法，41%的人持正面看法。而此前在2024年10月的民调中，他们对特朗普的好坏持平，均为48%。这些数据反映了拉丁裔选民在全国范围内对特朗普和共和党的更大程度的反对。

这里的选民目睹了非法移民涌入美国的浪潮，这首先成为前总统乔·拜登的沉重负担，随后在时任副总统卡马拉·哈里斯接手其竞选后，也成为她的一大难题。在特朗普的第二个任期内，非法移民数量大幅下降。但民主党人看到了在经济逆风和大量无犯罪记录的移民被逮捕和驱逐出境的背景下，重新赢得该地区选民支持的机会。

希诺霍萨的竞选团队认为，如果她和塔拉里科赢得与奥鲁克在 2018 年赢得的拉丁裔选票比例相同的百分比（并在其他选民中保持稳定），考虑到人口增长和变化，这将足以赢得大选。

今年春天曾与伊诺霍萨一起竞选的参议员鲁本·加列戈表示，他认为德克萨斯州的拉丁裔选民也有可能像他在2024年赢得亚利桑那州席位时那样，尽管特朗普也赢得了亚利桑那州。

“不要让先入为主的观念和过去的表现让你认为可以预测未来的表现。我真的认为德克萨斯州的形势变化非常快，”加列戈说道，并补充说他会告诉那些持怀疑态度的民主党领导人，“你们对2024年拉丁裔选民的遭遇感到愤怒。真正改变这种局面的方法就是找到优秀的候选人，而我们已经为你们找到了优秀的候选人。”

希诺霍萨从未主动谈及自己可能成为首位拉丁裔州长，即便被追问也鲜少提及——但她经常提到，如果成为首位来自她成长和就读高中的河谷地区的州长，那将意味着什么。在布朗斯维尔的一次集会后，一位记者问她回到家乡的感受，她谈到无论走到哪里，人们都会自称是失散多年的表亲——然后她会切换到西班牙语来回答下一个问题。

众议员维森特·冈萨雷斯是民主党人，他正努力保住共和党在选区重划中重点争取的席位之一。他的一则广告在当地电视台频繁播放，抱怨药品价格只有边境另一侧的一半。这则广告的目标受众是那些经常在边境桥上堵车，等待前往马塔莫罗斯或普罗格雷索等城镇取药的人们。

曾是德克萨斯音乐明星的鲍比·普利多（Bobby Pulido）投身政坛，挑战共和党众议员莫妮卡·德拉克鲁兹（Mónica de la Cruz）。他告诉CNN，他正在宣传共同的保守价值观，并关注该州人均收入最低的地区。他很早就与塔拉里科（Talarico）结盟，随着希诺霍萨（Hinojosa）竞选活动的加强，他开始更多地与她合作，包括上个月在比维尔（Beeville）举行的一场有2500人参加的集会。比维尔所在的县64%的人口是拉丁裔，在上届选举中，该县70%的选民支持特朗普。

对拉丁裔选民的诉求不仅会影响 2026 年德克萨斯州及其他地区的选举，还会影响 2028 年总统大选，甚至对 2032 年大选的影响更大，因为人口趋势将选举人团进一步南移。

普利多说：“拉丁裔人是一个谜，共和党人和民主党人都无法解开这个谜。”

不过，就在两年前，特朗普以 14 个百分点的优势赢得了这个州，这是自奥巴马的一些助手在 2012 年奥巴马连任后承诺通过一个名为“战场德克萨斯”的组织将该州变成蓝色以来，共和党在该州取得的最大优势——该组织很快就几乎消失了——而四年前，阿博特在该州以 11 个百分点的优势击败了奥鲁克。

据报道，今年夏天早些时候，阿博特竞选团队手头拥有近 7000 万美元的现金，他们正加紧进行挨家挨户的拉票活动，并在广告上花费数百万美元。

阿博特的发言人爱德华多·莱亚尔没有安排州长接受采访，并拒绝回答几个问题，例如阿博特是否会与希诺霍萨进行辩论，或者他是否认为对特朗普的支持率与 2024 年的水平相同。

利尔说：“阿博特在任期间一直致力于减税、控制开支，让德州民众的口袋里多出钱来，这使得德州成为全美生活成本最低的州之一。他正着力进一步降低房产税以及住房、保险、医疗、电力和大学教育的成本。吉娜·希诺霍萨则截然相反：她提出的是更高的税收和更高的生活成本。她可以随意使用任何竞选口号。”

在麦卡伦一家名为“小妖精”的露天酒吧里，希诺霍萨问在场的民众，如果他们信任政府，请举手。没有人举手。

在布朗斯维尔一家自行车店/咖啡店设立的电话银行里，她用手捂着额头，电话那头的一位女士告诉她，她不得不帮母亲支付电费，同时还拖欠了大量房产税利息，以至于她不得不搬进拖车里住。

“你并不孤单，”希诺霍萨告诉她。

那天晚上，在距离边境10分钟车程的一座十五岁生日庆典和婚礼大厅里，人造鲜花和水晶吊灯下，她又一次说出了她最喜欢的一句话：“这里是属于人民的，还是亿万富翁的世界，而我们只是生活在这里？”

“人们投票给特朗普，是因为他说这个体制被操纵了。人们知道他说得对。我也知道他说得对。民主党人并没有这么说。民主党人一直在维护一个完全站不住脚的体制，一个对我们不利的体制，”希诺霍萨说道。“共和党人一直掌权，所以他们负有主要责任，但责任并非完全没有。能够承认这一点，看清这一点并说出来——就在几周前，我才意识到，这场竞选的意义就在于此。”

这场竞选活动指望的不仅仅是传统支持者。

2021年1月6日，琳恩·达文波特在华盛顿椭圆形草坪的特朗普演讲现场，但中途她就离开了，回酒店买了个热狗睡了个午觉。她说，她觉得“他（特朗普）什么都没说”。那时，她已经认识了希诺霍萨，因为她曾亲眼目睹希诺霍萨在州议会教育委员会反对教育券制度。如今，她和其他一些支持希诺霍萨竞选的MAHA和MAGA妈妈们一样，都加入了希诺霍萨的竞选活动。

“我不会转投民主党，”达文波特告诉CNN。“我以后可能只会投反对票，然后支持候选人本人。”

37 岁的克拉丽莎·昆塔尼利亚 (Clarissa Quintanilla) 正在攻读土木工程研究生学位，她来到麦卡伦 (McAllen) 看望希诺霍萨 (Hinojosa)，并注意到她看到了多少支持希诺霍萨 (Hinojosa) 和塔拉里科 (Talarico) 的竞选标语。

她承认，过去几届选举周期中，民主党的希望总是不断燃起又不断破灭。

“每次发生这种情况，”她说，“都感觉离目标更近了一步。”