Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa resigns after 'devastating' election

This story has been updated with new information.

Three days after an election in which Texas Republicans vastly expanded their hold on the state, Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa announced Friday morning he will resign from his position after 12 years leading the party.

Because the party has held neither a Texas executive branch office nor either of the state's two U.S. Senate seats since the 1990s, the 72-year-old Hinojosa has for more than a decade been the de facto face of the Texas Democrats. He said he was "passing the torch" with the hope that the "next generation" can reimagine the party's strategy after the country's election of Donald Trump and after former Democratic strongholds in South Texas voted for the Republican over Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.

"In the days and weeks to come, it is imperative that our Democratic leaders across the country reevaluate what is best for our party and embrace the next generation of leaders to take us through the next four years of Trump and win back seats up and down the ballot," he said in a statement.

Hinojosa acknowledged "devastating defeats" in Texas and across the U.S. for Democrats in Tuesday's election and attributed them to a lack of messaging about "issues they care about most, including the economy."

"Though Democrats delivered one of the best economies our country has had, Americans just aren’t feeling it," he said.

A day after the election, Hinojosa apologized for saying in an interview with KUT that Democrats' positions on transgender issues and immigration cost them votes.

“You have a choice as a party,” Hinojosa told the Austin NPR affiliate. “You could, for example, you can support transgender rights up and down all the categories where the issue comes up, or you can understand that there's certain things that we just go too far on, that a big bulk of our population does not support.”

He added, "If you are going to ignore the political consequences of these kinds of things, then you're asking to lose these elections in the manner that we did.”

Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who defeated his Democratic opponent Tuesday by a much larger margin than in 2018, in TV ads and in campaign appearances used the issue of how transgender athletes may compete in athletic events to suggest that U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, would have allowed men to compete against women and use the same dressing rooms. Allred rejected the comparison, calling it misleading and petty.

Texas Republican Party Chair Abraham George said Hinojosa's comments on KUT were "a moment of sanity" in which his counterpart "acknowledged that Texas voters do not want radical transgender ideology in our state."

"My encouragement to Democrats: Find a chairman even more radical and liberal to succeed him," George wrote in a statement after Hinojosa announced his resignation. "In the meantime, the Republican Party of Texas will continue working with our President Donald Trump, Governor Greg Abbott, and our Republican lawmakers to pass conservative policies and secure even bigger wins in 2026."

Hinojosa did not mention transgender issues or immigration in his resignation statement, which called on the party to continue to seek out disaffected voters and to capture young people as they age into the electorate.

"While I will no longer hold the title of chair, I will proudly wear that of Texas Democrat," Hinojosa said Friday. "I pledge that I will always do everything in my power to push toward progress and toward a Blue Texas.”

'A new way forward'

Hinojosa will formally step aside at a state Democratic Executive Committee meeting in March, when precinct chairs can select a new leader. Minutes after Hinojosa announced his resignation, the Texas Progressive Caucus called for a "fair, transparent and open campaign" to replace the chair, saying Democratic voters and progressive activists should be allowed to weigh in on the executive committee's selection process.

His departure comes after Republicans flipped two open state House seats and ousted Democratic state Sen. Morgan LaMantia, augmenting their control of both legislative chambers amid historic gains for Trump across the state. In a convincing victory, Cruz also defeated Allred by nearly 9 percentage points in one of the most expensive and closely watched races. In 2018, Cruz beat Democratic former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke by just 2.6 percentage points.

Though Republicans, for the first time in years, won the majority of votes from Latinos in Texas, according to CNN exit polls, and made inroads with Black voters on Tuesday, Hinojosa defended his record. He said the party has modernized its organization and made "significant and durable gains in our now-Democrat-led big urban counties and cities, as well as in the suburban outer rings — many of these leaders reflecting the African American, Asian, and Latino communities that had long gone underrepresented in our state."

Newly reelected state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, signaled Friday that she supported Hinojosa's decision to step aside, saying she agreed that "it is time for new leadership."

"In the weeks and months ahead, we will engage in the work of understanding this defeat and how we get this message out to our supporters and (maybe more importantly) those who supported the other side," Eckhardt said in a statement.

A native of Texas' Rio Grande Valley, Hinojosa is an attorney by training and served as a Cameron County judge for 12 years before taking the helm of the state Democratic Party.

He came to office in the middle of the 2012 election cycle, the same year that then-President Barack Obama lost Texas by 16 percentage points even as he won the national election. Two years later, Texas Democrats were again shut out in statewide elections and Republicans won 98 of the 150 seats in the state House.

Democrats' fortunes under Hinojosa improved in the 2016 cycle when they picked up five House seats, and were able to build on in 2018 when the party flipped a dozen seats in the lower chamber and O'Rourke came close to upsetting Cruz.

The party had been unable to sustain that momentum over the past three election cycles.

Hinojosa's daughter, Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa of Austin, expressed support for her father's decision in a statement Friday.

"This is a time to come together. We will need each other more than ever," she wrote in a social media post. "Thank you ... for taking this opportunity to focus our efforts on a new way forward that embraces our vitality, energy & talent. Also, I love you, Dad."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas Democratic Party chair resigns after 'devastating' losses