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BROWNSVILLE — Texas Rep. Gina Hinojosa on Wednesday announced she is running for governor in 2026, setting up a potential clash between Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and one of the Legislature’s most strident critics of his school voucher program.

“Our fight right now is against the billionaires and corporations who are driving up prices, closing our neighborhood schools and cheating Texans out of basic health care,” Hinojosa, a five-term Democratic lawmaker from Austin, said in her campaign launch video. “That’s who Greg Abbott works for. I’m running for governor to work for you.”

Hinojosa’s entry expands a Democratic primary field that includes Andrew White, a Houston businessman and son of former Gov. Mark White, Bobby Cole, a rancher and retired firefighter, and Bay City Council member Benjamin Flores. Whoever wins the nomination will be a decided underdog against Abbott, who had more than $87 million in his campaign account at the end of June and has won all three of his gubernatorial races by double digits.

Hinojosa, a civil rights and union lawyer who grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, formally launched her campaign at a rally in Brownsville on Wednesday evening.

A crowd of more than 100 people crammed inside a room in Brownsville’s historic district chanted “no te dejes” — a Spanish call to fight back or defend oneself — as she took the stage. 

“She’s proven that she is a fighter,” said Maricela Alvarado, a 62-year-old Army veteran from Harlingen. “She has a lot of experience with how things are run in Austin and she’s not afraid.”

In an interview before her formal announcement, Hinojosa said she was initially considering running for comptroller, the office tasked with implementing the state’s $1 billion voucher program.

“But I took a step back and realized it’s really Abbott who’s the problem,” she said. “In Texas, we support our public schools, but Abbott doesn’t care about what Texans want. He stopped caring a long time ago.”

Abbott campaign manager Kim Snyder called Hinojosa “out of step with Texans.”

“Texans deserve a Governor who will continue to secure the border, fight for safer communities and uphold family values — not someone who supports failed, radical policies that hurt hardworking Texans,” Snyder said in a statement.

White said in a statement that Hinojosa is a “progressive who represents her district well,” but that Democrats needed a “candidate who will bring together progressives, moderates and independents to beat Greg Abbott.”

Hinojosa dismissed criticism that she was too progressive for a statewide race, arguing that “public schools have never been a partisan issue in Texas.”

“People will see in my record, in my leadership, a champion for neighborhood schools, for families, for affordability — for the things that Texans care about,” she said.

In her campaign launch video, Hinojosa said she first decided to run for office when her son’s elementary school faced possible closure due to state budget cuts. She was elected to the Austin ISD school board in 2012, where she later served as board president before winning election to the Texas House in 2016.

Through nearly a decade in the Legislature, Hinojosa made defending public education her calling card, becoming a primary foil to Abbott on private school vouchers. In her launch video, she contrasted her efforts to bolster public school funding with Abbott’s pursuit of vouchers, which she argued would “devastate our schools.” She also criticized the governor for accepting $10 million in campaign donations from Pennsylvania GOP megadonor Jeff Yass, one of the nation’s leading voucher proponents. 

“Abbott’s corruption runs deep. The billionaires he works for will not stop until they get what they want,” Hinojosa said. “As long as we have a governor that can be bought, we won’t have the Texas we deserve.”

Hinojosa’s campaign also touted legislation she passed to bring in almost $1 billion in federal funding for indigent healthcare in Travis County and to reduce standardized testing and increase teacher pay.

In the interview, Hinojosa vowed that her campaign would raise enough money to be competitive, adding that the size of Abbott’s war chest was part of the problem she was running on.

“You don’t get that kind of cash in your campaign coffers by doing the work of the people,” she said. “He can have his dirty money, and we will have the people of Texas.”

Joyce Hamilton, a member of the Northern Cameron County Democrats who attended the Brownsville rally, has hope that Hinojosa won’t back down to pressure and that that will inspire support from even Republican-leaning areas of the state.

“I just have a whole lot of hope that the state Democratic Party will give her all the support she needs so that she can push through this campaign effectively,” Hamilton said.

Hinojosa’s roots in the Valley inspired an outpouring of support from the crowd, many of whom knew her as she grew up in Brownsville. Democrats hope that support will be enough to help them reverse Republican inroads in South Texas.

Jared Hockema, chair of the Cameron County Democratic Party, said the party’s losses in the 2024 election were caused just as much by people who voted for Trump as it was by Democratic voters who didn’t vote. To turn the tide, he said, Democrats need a candidate who voters can believe in.

“We need people to run, great candidates like Gina, so we’re positioned to win, and I think we are going to do that with her.”

Berenice Garcia contributed to this story.

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