Texas elected far-left leaders, but they can’t actually turn the state blue

Progressives who swept Texas’ statewide offices Tuesday may have grand, far-left-leaning plans for their state, but they’ll have no picnic fulfilling their agenda.

Democrats have long yearned for a gubernatorial candidate who could break the state open.

After years of relying on media-darling candidates, Gina Hinojosa, a formerly little-known Texas state representative, took the governor’s office from Greg Abbott by a resounding seven points.

Not because she had a compelling story or presence, but merely because of a nationwide blue wave that caught Texas in its wake.

The wave also gave Democrats the powerful office of lieutenant governor and control of the state House of Representatives for the first time since 2002.

Texas’ new Democratic leaders have received shockingly little attention compared with their predecessor candidates.

They’re also more left-leaning than anyone elected to statewide office in modern memory.

Yet they’ll probably change Texas far less than either the left hopes — or the right fears.

Democratic Party primary voters didn’t pick Gov.-elect Hinojosa because they thought she was a moderate.

She is a proud member of the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus.

In 2019, she introduced a bill to provide “every Texas resident [with] comprehensive healthcare services” — a state version of Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All proposal.

The “resident” language was not unintentional, because she wanted illegal immigrants to get coverage, too.

By some reckonings, the Texas lieutenant governor, who presides over the state senate, is more powerful than the governor.

Vikki Goodwin, another formerly little-known state representative who just bested Texas powerbroker Dan Patrick, will inherit this chair and, unless the Republican Senate thwarts her, its powers.

Goodwin is no moderate either: Her voting record in 2025 made her the sixth most liberal of Texas’ 150 House members, slightly more liberal than Hinojosa.

Given these offices, a newly Democratic House, and several other new Democratic statewide officials, including attorney general, land commissioner, agriculture commissioner and the comptroller’s office, many think the Democrats could fundamentally transform the state.

In reality, they can do little to change Texas’ general direction.

One conservative program that might fall is school vouchers, which Abbott made a key part of his last term in office.

Hinojosa campaigned to “End the Voucher Scam,” and Goodwin promised to block any budget with school-voucher funding.

But vouchers were signed into law only last year, meaning that the Democrats would only return Texas’ educational system to where it was very recently.

Many point to Hinojosa’s ardent campaign against data centers, which could threaten one of the state’s biggest industries.

Texas is second only to Virginia in the number of existing data centers and has more than twice the amount of expected growth in large data-center capacity as any other state.

Yet the actual language of Hinojosa’s campaign focused on blocking entirely “new” data centers, not the vast number already approved or under construction, and only until “the legislature can meet to put in place real protections.”

That’s not far from Abbott’s position backing a temporary ban until study and new protections can be put in place.

The new progressive Democrats do want to spend more.

Hinojosa promised a $1,500 “corruption tax refund” — the corruption being that Abbott “hoarded” too much money in the state’s rainy-day fund.

She and Goodwin will also push to expand state Medicaid and health-care spending.

But since Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment banning state income taxes in 2019, and since the majority of the state’s taxes come from a sales tax that Democrats are not eager to raise, there is little wiggle room for more spending.

In his book “Red State Blues,” political scientist Matt Grossmann noted that Republicans were barely able to change the direction of formerly blue states when they assumed power after the 1994 and 2010 red waves.

One reason was that the general political tendencies of states mattered more than partisan control.

So states like Michigan remained relatively liberal under both Democrats and Republicans, while Texas remained relatively conservative under either party.

Democrats in Texas will learn what Republicans elsewhere have discovered: A state’s policies tend to be sticky.

Texas has been seen as a model of conservative governance, and for good reason.

Since 2020, it’s added 2.6 million residents, more than any other state.

Its low taxes, low cost of living, cheap energy and booming housing market are a continuing refutation of arguments that the red-state model can’t work.

Political and constitutional constraints mean that a technically blue Texas will likely remain far more conservative in its policies than even many technically red states.

The Texas state model might change some, but it will endure.

Judge Glock is director of research at the Manhattan Institute and author of “The Dead Pledge: The Origins of the Mortgage Market and Federal Bailouts, 1913–1939.” Adapted from City Journal.