Gina Hinojosa has a chance to become governor of Texas. That is something Democrats have not realistically been able to say very often during Greg Abbott’s time in office.
But having an opportunity and campaigning as though you intend to seize it are two different things.
Hinojosa sometimes gives me the impression that running for governor is an eight-to-five job. I do not mean that literally. She travels, gives speeches, runs advertisements, and attends campaign events. But when you are trying to defeat a three-term incumbent governor of Texas, doing the normal things may not be enough.
You have to campaign as though you are unemployed and the only job available in Texas is governor.
James Talarico seems to understand that.
He appears everywhere. Restaurants. Music halls. Town halls. Black communities where voters have questions about him. Hispanic communities where he cannot assume their support. Rural Texas. Television. Streaming services. His campaign has spent more than $25 million on advertising since May while he continues traveling the state meeting voters.
Talarico campaigns like nobody owes him a vote.
Bobby Pulido understands it too.
Pulido is running in a South Texas congressional district Donald Trump carried easily in 2024. Instead of waiting for Hispanic voters to remember that he is a Democrat—or assuming his famous name will carry him—Pulido has taken politics into places where ordinary people already live their lives.
His campaign talks about reaching voters at restaurants, barbecues, family gatherings and community events. In Beeville, 2,750 people packed the Grand Dancehall for an event featuring Pulido, Talarico, Hinojosa and Tejano musicians. That was more people than voted for Kamala Harris in all of Bee County in 2024.
Pulido is trying to reach people who might never attend a Democratic Party meeting.
There is nothing new about this.
Thirty years ago, Texas Democrats had another candidate who understood that nobody was going to hand him anything.
His name was Victor Morales.
Morales was a high-school government teacher with little money and almost no political establishment behind him. So he climbed into his little Nissan pickup and drove.
And drove.
And drove.
By the spring of 1996, Morales had put about 60,000 miles on that pickup campaigning across Texas. The Los Angeles Times followed him from town to town as he stopped at Dairy Queens, convenience stores, and anywhere else he could find Texans willing to listen.
The Morales name undoubtedly helped him. Texas already had a well-known Democratic attorney general named Dan Morales, and contemporary reporting noted that some voters may initially have associated the two names.
But the name did not drive those 60,000 miles.
Victor Morales did.
He entered a Democratic Senate primary against experienced politicians and finished first with 36 percent. Then he defeated Congressman John Bryant in the runoff and became the Democratic nominee against powerful Republican Senator Phil Gramm.
He eventually lost to Gramm. But an almost unknown schoolteacher driving around Texas in a pickup had made himself a statewide political figure.
The pickup became part of the campaign because it told voters something without Morales having to say it:
I came to you.
That is what challengers have to do.
Gina Hinojosa is doing some campaigning. She has traveled rural Texas, bought advertising, spoken in Houston and recently appeared with Pulido and Talarico in Beeville. Her campaign has also begun attacking Abbott aggressively over data centers, schools and other issues.
But there remains a difference in intensity.
Abbott has money, organization, statewide name recognition and three terms as governor. Texans already know who Greg Abbott is.
Hinojosa cannot wait for them to discover who Gina Hinojosa is.
That is particularly true with Hispanic voters.
The recent University of Texas poll showed Hinojosa essentially tied with Abbott among Hispanic registered voters. Meanwhile, Talarico, a white Democrat from Austin, enjoys a considerably larger advantage over Ken Paxton among those same voters.
That should frighten the Hinojosa campaign.
Hispanic voters do not belong to Gina Hinojosa because her last name is Hinojosa. They do not belong to Democrats because Democrats once received their parents’ votes. They have to be asked. They have to be persuaded. They have to believe the candidate understands what is happening in their lives.
Pulido knows that.
Talarico knows that.
Victor Morales knew it in 1996.
There is another reason Hinojosa needs to campaign harder now. Abbott has shown that he will change when he sees political danger.
Data centers became a liability, and Abbott changed direction. Rural opposition grew, and suddenly the governor who had celebrated Texas becoming an artificial-intelligence powerhouse started talking about restrictions, water, electricity, and making data centers pay their own way.
Whether Abbott believes every word is almost irrelevant politically.
He saw voters moving and reacted.
A challenger cannot respond to that by running a conventional campaign.
She has to make Abbott react to her.
Imagine Gina Hinojosa spending the next two months showing up someplace unexpected every day.
A small-town café in East Texas. A football game in the Valley. A Black church in Houston. A ranch outside Lubbock. A union hall in Beaumont. A school threatened with closure. A neighborhood worried about its water supply because somebody wants to build another giant data center nearby.
Not simply Democratic events.
Texas events.
Somebody on her campaign should wake up every morning asking one question:
Where can we send Gina today that Greg Abbott never expects her to go?
She does not need Victor Morales’ Nissan pickup.
She needs his attitude.
You seek political office because you want people to give you something extraordinarily valuable: their trust, their vote, and permission to govern them.
Nobody owes you that.
If you want the office, work for it.