Source: Politics
AUSTIN, Texas — Gina Hinojosa’s stunning victory put Texas at the epicenter of a political earthquake — and the aftershocks could upend Andy Beshear’s path to the White House.
For months, increasingly frustrated Hinojosa allies publicly and privately pressured the Democratic Governors Association, which Beshear chairs, to help push her over the finish line, as many national Democrats and donors stayed on the sidelines. On Tuesday, Hinojosa dominated the race for the Texas governor’s mansion, riding a blue wave that swept Democrats into power across the country, including flipping six governorships in states won by President Donald Trump.
Latino operatives who spoke with POLITICO feel vindicated — and are turning their knives on Beshear ahead of a potential 2028 presidential bid.
“His presidential campaign is over,” said Sergio Gonzalez, a Democratic operative working on programs to turn out Latino voters in the midterms.
Beshear “doesn’t understand politics in the way that a president needs to understand politics,” and “failed Latino voters and Texas voters and Democrats in this moment,” said Gonzalez, who previously worked as a top aide to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.
Hinojosa’s race became the ultimate underdog campaign — a push to conquer a state Democrats had all but abandoned, with a candidate from the increasingly conservative Rio Grande Valley who her team was betting could turn out Latino voters in droves. Many national Democrats privately believed Hinojosa didn’t have a shot. But as public polling showed her closing the gap with three-term incumbent GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, the DGA’s minimal involvement in the race turned into a blistering wound that Hinojosa’s allies argued cut at the heart of the party’s historic lack of investment in Latino communities and candidates.
It’s made the Texas race the heart of an intra-party debate that’s only poised to explode ahead of 2028, when Latino voters will be central to any winning presidential coalition. And her allies are out to challenge Beshear’s party leadership potential, taking their shots arguing that the Texas victory is not his to claim.
“Andy Beshear is going to have to look at his playbook and understand that there was some pretty big missteps,” Stephanie Valencia, co-founder of Latino polling firm Equis Research, told POLITICO.
The DGA defended its involvement and Beshear’s leadership, touting the more than $1.4 million it spent in Texas, including paying for campaign expenses and staff on the ground to support Hinojosa. The organization noted it featured Hinojosa at multiple events hosted by governors to introduce candidates like her to national donors.
“We always believed in Gina and knew she could win,” Meghan Meehan-Draper, the DGA’s executive director, said in a statement. “The DGA was proud to support her campaign as its largest contributor, along with our $12 million investment in Latino outreach across multiple successful campaigns on the path to electing a majority of Democratic governors for the first time since 2010.”
But Hinojosa’s allies say it was about more than just money.
In its final months, the surprising viability of Hinojosa’s campaign sparked a stand-off between Latino consultants, organizations and members of Congress on one side, and the national Democratic gubernatorial campaign arm on the other, over how to invest in winning Latinos, a bloc of voters whose tendencies to swing between parties is redefining the political landscape.
The campaign itself is also taking a shot at the DGA and Beshear. Hinojosa’s win “was the result of a curiosity that too many people in the establishment are still scared to embrace,” campaign manager Amy Friedman wrote in a post-election memo obtained by POLITICO. “Even the Democratic Governors Association — the entity set up to literally help Democrats win — never believed she could.”
The DGA’s investments haven’t added up to any goodwill for Beshear from the Latino leaders and Hinojosa’s allies, who accuse the Kentucky governor of first ignoring and later forgoing a chance to put his full weight behind Hinojosa, who on Tuesday became the state’s first Latina governor.
“Don’t even get me started,” said Rebecca Katz of Fight Agency, which worked with Gina’s campaign and has been calling out Beshear on X. “[The DGA] underestimated her every step of the way. Not only did they not give to Gina, but they actively undermined her with other donors. It was outrageous.”
What Hinojosa’s campaign and allies saw as a generational opportunity to take a risk and flip Texas was met with deep skepticism and an even deeper lack of resources across an ever-growing map of competitive governor’s races in a blue wave year. Texas is among the most expensive states in the country to campaign in, and rallying donors to spend big on state-level races has long been a party problem. Abbott had a massive war chest of $105.7 million and the backing of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who poured nearly half a billion dollars into the midterms overall.
Dozens of Latino leaders, in two separate letters from September to October, pleaded with the DGA and Beshear to invest more in Hinojosa’s bid, at first asking for $10 million and later lowering it to $3 million. The calls for a massive influx of cash that could level the playing field fell on deaf ears until the final weeks of the campaign. On Sept. 29, Beshear called Hinojosa to commit $1 million from the DGA.
Playing out in the background was the looming 2028 Democratic presidential landscape, which had already shifted to heavily rely on Latino voters even before Texas entered the picture. Beshear is one of many Democrats considering a presidential run.
But other potential contenders jumped in forcefully to back Hinojosa, making her campaign into a mini 2028 proxy battle.
Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, who was among the signatories of the letters to the DGA, campaigned with her twice. Both California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore contributed to her campaign or fundraised for her. And Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker not only helped fund the DGA itself, but separately pledged $1.2 million to Hinojosa in early October, after Beshear’s phone call with Hinojosa.
“I was pleased to be able to support her,” Pritzker said in response to questions from POLITICO at a news conference Wednesday. “I think that I catalyzed others to.”
Gallego told POLITICO he “believed in Gina from Day One.” While he didn’t directly level any criticism toward Beshear or the DGA, he said her campaign is a teaching moment for the road to 2028, which could see Texas newly competitive at the state and presidential level.
“We need to at least learn from this that there’s a lot more possibilities, that we should be looking at these states that people used to think are unreachable, and understand that if we have good talent and we have good energy, that we should make investments going forward,” Gallego said.
Beshear has not shut down speculation about his presidential ambitions, and leading the DGA has afforded him the opportunity to be the front and center for some of the biggest statewide races in the country.
Carlos Eduardo Espina, the popular Gen-Z Latino social media star, has appeared multiple times with Beshear this year. Espina, who emcee’d Hinojosa’s watch party, doesn’t share the same concerns as many of the Latino operatives who’ve also backed Hinojosa. Espina said he has a “great relationship” with Beshear and that the Kentucky governor has actively courted Latino support for months.
“He’s honestly one of the best leaders we have in our party on how to reach people and how to communicate with voters who might feel disengaged from the political process,” Espina said.
Beshear pushed for the seven-figure investment that eventually landed in Texas, and “personally pushed to send more money from the DGA in the closing week,” said Eric Hyers, Beshear’s longtime ally and former campaign manager. Beshear also made a $25,000 donation from his leadership PAC and separately invested $300,000 in operations specifically targeting Latino turnout in Texas.
The DGA also funneled over $12 million toward Latino outreach in Nevada and Arizona, two key presidential states with large shares of Latino voters and high-profile gubernatorial races. With several key Trump-won states in play and a wide map, and the party’s well-documented money woes, the lion’s share of the DGA’s resources went to states that looked competitive from the get-go. The goal was to “win as many races as we can,” as Beshear said to POLITICO back in September.
Tuesday proved to be a massive night across the board, as the DGA flipped seats including Nevada and Democrats will now represent 30 states.
“He feels good about the spending decisions that he and his colleagues made,” Hyers said of Beshear. “Under his chairmanship, all incumbent governors were reelected, every state with a Democratic governor was held — including Kansas — and Democrats flipped six states.”
Yet Hinojosa’s win in Texas is the “crown jewel of the night with generational implications” when it comes to Latino voters the Democratic Party has been fighting to win back since 2024, Valencia said. The Democratic Party doesn’t need “infighting” after their blowout win, she added, but “we need to learn from our mistakes.”
And even Hinojosa’s campaign points to that split of investments in calling out the DGA, with Friedman, her campaign manager, writing in the memo that “when pushed for more investment, they balked. They would go on to send six times the investment in Alaska than Texas.”
Hinojosa’s upset in Texas instead came from a relentless focus on affordability issues — especially slamming the growing cost of data centers — and a historic Democratic ticket that also saw James Talarico beat Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Senate race. In a blistering midterm environment for the GOP, Hinojosa and Talarico swung historically red counties and the Latino-dominated Rio Grande Valley.
It was ground zero for what became an “earthquake” of Latinos swinging en masse for Democrats across the country. Latinos haven’t felt like they have a political home, said SOMOS PAC’s Melissa Morales. Part of that comes from a lack of prioritizing the bloc and a lack of investment. The “starkest example” is Texas, she said.
The criticism isn’t stopping Beshear’s team from touting his strength should he enter a presidential primary. Going into 2028, “there will now be a Democratic governor in every battleground state because Gov. Beshear and the DGA just re-wrote the 2028 map,” Hyers said.
Taking the stage after her ground-shaking win in Austin, Hinojosa in one sentence touched on what had become a central intra-party tension bubbling under the surface of her meteoric rise.
“It never bothered me that they doubted me — it bothered me that they doubted us,” Hinojosa told the packed room.
Shia Kapos contributed to this report.
Read MorePolitics, DC, Governor: Texas, Gina Hinojosa, Andy Beshear, Midterms, 2026 Elections, 2028 Elections, Latinos