Democrat Hinojosa wins Texas governor's race, ends 3-decade Republican run

Democrat Gina Hinojosa won the Texas governor's race Nov. 3, becoming the first member of her party elected to the office since 1990.

Hinojosa led three-term Governor Greg Abbott (Republican) with 57% of the vote to 41.7% at 11:17 p.m. ET on Nov. 3, when the Associated Press called the race. Rising energy costs took center stage in the election. In Texas, those concerns were fueled by rising power demand forecasts driven by data centers.

Fifty-six percent of Texas voters oppose data center construction, according to the Texas Politics Project poll, yet the state has 32 proposed gas-fired projects to power data centers.

In her campaign, Hinojosa promised to block permits for "unfair" data center projects. She plans to direct the Public Utility Commission of Texas to freeze residential electric rates until legislation is passed requiring data centers and other high-load users to pay for their own electricity.

While Hinojosa said she supports investing in new transmission infrastructure, such as 765-kV lines, she wants more stakeholder involvement and to use "least harm routes."

Abbott championed data center development in the state but later changed course.

In November 2025, Abbott called Texas "the epicenter of AI development" while announcing Google's $40 billion investment in cloud and AI infrastructure. But during a June campaign stop, he called for prohibiting AI data centers in rural neighborhoods, ending their tax breaks and requiring developers to fund their projects.

He also halted work by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas on the current "Batch Zero" interconnection process and suspended approval of any authorization to energize data centers until ERCOT conducts a verification process and audit (Project No. 58317), and ordered state environmental regulators to pause issuing permits for all data center-related projects until the audit is complete, which ERCOT expects will be by Dec. 10.