National democrats shortchange Texas to protect Andy Beshear

By Alma Cordero · Reporting from El Paso · October 11, 2026

National leaders starve Gina Hinojosa's surging Texas campaign of cash while prioritizing 2028, proving the party treats Latino voters as an afterthought.

The checkbook wall in Austin

The policy never lands in Washington. It lands here, in El Paso and San Antonio, where families watch the cost of living climb while national party committees guard their coin. The race for the governor’s seat in Texas has tightened into a dead heat. Yet the people running the national machinery treat the state like a lost cause. According to a New York Times/Siena poll, Democratic state Representative Gina Hinojosa leads within the margin of sampling error. A YouGov survey put Hinojosa ahead. Newsweek reports that no public poll has shown Republican Governor Greg Abbott leading. Yet when Hinojosa and her allies requested $10 million from Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and the Democratic Governors Association, the DGA announced plans to put a paltry $1 million into the race.

Andy Beshear chairs the DGA and is expected to run for president. He is too busy building a national profile on a book tour and visiting early primary states to fund a seismic shift on the border. Texas Democratic members of Congress and national group leaders accused Beshear of prioritizing his own ambitions over helping Hinojosa unseat Abbott. Abbott is seeking a record fourth term. Texas Representative Sylvia Garcia told CNN, “It’s just felt that he’s not taking Latinos seriously, and they’re not taking Latinos seriously as a voting bloc in the Democratic Party.” She warned that “if that’s the case, then he is going to have a Latino problem in 2028.” Jess Morales Rocketto, president and CEO of the Latino group Maremoto, told DGA officials during a Zoom meeting that their complete mishandling of the race and total disrespect has been absolutely astonishing, as reported by CNN.

The oil barons and the shortchanged base

Greg Abbott does not suffer from a lack of cash. His campaign is fueled by the extraction economy of West Texas and the real estate fortunes of billionaires. Abbott raised $91.5 million, according to the Houston Chronicle, with contributions from Midland Energy Inc. founder S. Javaid Anwar and Alex Fairly. Abbott outspent Hinojosa from July to late September, ending the reporting period with money on hand. Hinojosa, a civil rights and union lawyer from the Rio Grande Valley, has built her campaign on donations averaging just $50 each, raising $21.7 million.

The DGA hides behind excuses from executive director Meghan Meehan-Draper about campaign finance laws and stretched-thin funds. Yet billionaire Illinois Governor JB Pritzker stepped in with direct donations to Hinojosa and the DGA. He told Texas Latino House members that the race is winnable and called for the cavalry. Alida Garcia of the group Twin Impact told leaders that Hinojosa unlocks the frustration felt nationally. She noted that Texas sets the tone for how the Latino community is treated everywhere else in the nation. This mirrors the 1994 United States congressional elections, the Republican Revolution. There, the collapse of a long-term partisan hegemony shattered a decades-old regional order through a sudden realignment of the electorate. National gatekeepers who refuse to finance this crack in the wall fear what happens when a border state finally breaks their managed decline.

The cost of institutional cowardice

The people who built this country's wealth—the housekeepers, the garment workers, the folks packing produce out past Fabens—know the smell of institutional abandonment. They have smelled it every time a party committee visits the fence for a photo-op and disappears when the ballots are printed. National strategists misread demographic shifts until the ground caves in beneath them. Latino Democratic leaders begged the DGA for $10 million. They were handed a rejection wrapped in bureaucrat-speak about cheaper maps. This came even as a UMass Lowell/YouGov survey showed Hinojosa leading among women, Black voters, and Hispanic voters.

Andy Beshear and his allies in the DGA apparatus owe an accounting to every working family in Texas. Their labor built the state's surplus while their rights were bartered away. Justice would require the Democratic Party to match the energy of the small donors who funded Hinojosa's surge, rather than hoarding capital for a 2028 primary cocktail circuit. If Hinojosa loses, the blame belongs squarely on national leaders. They decided that protecting a gubernatorial incumbent's feelings in Frankfort was more important than winning electoral votes in Austin.

National democrats shortchange Texas to protect Andy Beshear

The checkbook wall in Austin

The oil barons and the shortchanged base

The cost of institutional cowardice

Sources