Greg Abbott Is Still the Favorite. But He Can Hear the Hooves Behind Him.
Greg Abbott Talked About Shooting People at the Border. Latino Texans Need to Hear It Before November.
August 8, 2026
Greg Abbott once explained that Texas was not “shooting people who come across the border” because the Biden administration would charge state officials with murder.
Read that again.
He did not say Texas would never shoot people simply for crossing the border because that would be wrong.
He said the reason Texas was not doing it was that the federal government would charge them with murder.
Now ask yourself who Texans picture when a politician talks about people coming across the Texas-Mexico border.
They are not picturing white Europeans.
They are picturing Latinos.
And that should matter enormously in a state where Republicans cannot maintain their political dominance without winning a substantial number of Latino votes.
Greg Abbott is still the favorite for governor.
But favorites sometimes lose races nobody thought could be lost.
Remember Rich Strike
In the 2022 Kentucky Derby, Rich Strike entered the race at 80-to-1.
Almost nobody expected him to win.
He barely made the field. The favorites were out front while Rich Strike was buried behind horses, seemingly too far back to matter.
Then he found an opening.
He came charging up the rail and won one of the greatest upsets in Kentucky Derby history.
Greg Abbott should remember that race.
Abbott has almost every advantage a candidate could want.
Money.
Name recognition.
A Republican organization that has controlled Texas statewide politics for decades.
And eleven years in the governor’s mansion.
Gina Hinojosa has a fraction of his money and nowhere near his statewide recognition.
She should be twenty points behind.
She isn’t.
Recent polls have repeatedly shown Abbott leading by single digits, with some showing a much closer race.
Nobody should claim Gina Hinojosa is winning.
She isn’t.
But the horse almost nobody is watching is still running.
And Abbott has begun accumulating weight.
Abbott’s Own Words May Be the Heaviest
Republicans have spent years making the border one of their strongest political issues.
There is nothing wrong with demanding that a country control its border.
There is nothing wrong with enforcing immigration laws.
There is a very large difference between enforcing the law and talking casually about shooting people who cross it.
Abbott crossed that line himself.
His words become even more dangerous politically because millions of Latino Texans have relatives, grandparents or great-grandparents who came north across that same border.
Many Latino voters are conservative.
Many are religious.
Many own businesses.
Many oppose illegal immigration.
Many vote Republican.
But voting Republican and believing that people should be shot for crossing a border are not the same thing.
The question is what happens when enough Latino Texans hear Abbott’s actual words.
Not somebody’s interpretation.
Not a Democratic campaign commercial.
His words.
Then There Are the Data Centers
Abbott has another problem of his own making.
He spent years advertising Texas as the place where giant technology companies should build.
When Google announced a $40 billion Texas investment, Abbott celebrated it and declared Texas the “epicenter of AI development.”
Then Texans started looking at the bill.
Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity.
They can consume enormous amounts of water.
They require transmission infrastructure.
Someone has to build it.
Someone has to pay for it.
And Texans began asking a very Republican question:
What is this going to cost me?
Suddenly Abbott began worrying about data centers too.
His administration moved to protect residential customers from infrastructure costs and water demands and began scrutinizing additional data-center connections.
Those may be sensible actions.
But Abbott has been governor since 2015.
Why weren’t those questions asked before Texas rolled out the welcome mat?
Republicans would never give a Democratic governor a pass for that.
Imagine a Democratic governor announcing billions of dollars in new development, celebrating the companies coming to Texas and only afterward asking whether Texans had enough electricity and water to support them.
Republicans would destroy him.
They would ask:
Governor, didn’t anybody think about this before you signed the press release?
That question is just as legitimate when the governor is Greg Abbott.
Eleven Years Means You Own It
Abbott cannot run against Austin.
He is Austin.
He cannot blame the previous Democratic administration.
There wasn’t one.
He cannot tell Texans he just arrived and discovered these problems.
He has been governor for eleven years.
That is the danger of running for a fourth term.
Eventually every problem comes with the same question:
Governor, where were you?
The border rhetoric belongs to Abbott.
The data-center boom belongs to Abbott.
And now the political consequences belong to Abbott too.
Nobody Is Watching the Horse Behind Him
For now, most of the political world is watching other Texas races.
James Talarico gets national attention.
Ken Paxton generates headlines simply by waking up in the morning.
Gina Hinojosa remains largely unknown outside political circles.
That may not last.
I wrote months ago that Democrats were making a mistake by failing to invest seriously in Hinojosa.
I still believe that.
She doesn’t have to convince Texas voters that Greg Abbott is a Democrat, a socialist or some new political creature.
She only has to make Texans look at the governor they have had for eleven years.
And she needs Latino Texans to hear one sentence.
Texas wasn’t “shooting people who come across the border” because the Biden administration would charge the state with murder.
Abbott said it.
Gina Hinojosa only has to make sure people hear it.
In 2022, Rich Strike was still an 80-to-1 long shot when the Kentucky Derby started.
Nobody paid much attention to the horse coming up the rail.
Until suddenly everybody did.
Greg Abbott is still ahead.
But come September, people may finally notice the race.
