Hinojosa Hates the Culture War

Plus: Decline in gubernatorial debates, thin-skinned commies, and more...

"You can shove it with your culture wars," said Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa, describing her mindset toward Gov. Greg Abbott when interviewed by Politico. Hinojosa has been making the case that her challenge against three-termer Abbott will be successful because she's gone "back to basics" and reflected voters' concerns about the economy instead of growing distracted by the culture warring that has for so long co-opted much of her party.

"We're not doing the culture wars. We are talking about how we're gonna deliver for Texans, how we're gonna make life easier for working families," Hinojosa told Politico. "And so in that sense, I think that has to be the way forward for Democrats, to focus on the economic issues and not take the bait when it comes to the culture wars."

Hinojosa very lightly mocked the pronouns issue—long a fixation of her fellow Democrats—in a recent ad, declaring her pronouns are "mom, Texan and soon-to-be governor."

Hinojosa is kind of an interesting candidate: She found her way into politics not because she wanted to be a politician exactly (at least in her own telling), but because her son's elementary school in Austin was in danger of closing due to budget cuts. She worked to rally other parents around the cause, and they successfully kept the school open. She ran for school board and won. Then she ran for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives and won, again, making education funding her primary focus. Kitchen table issues are in her DNA. But she's also handled abortion messaging in a very interesting way, drawing on her own experience with getting a life-limiting diagnosis for her first and choosing to carry the baby to term—yet also saying that her experiencing choosing life galvanized a belief that every woman should do what's right for them individually.

"That issue, what happened to me and the issue, really, of pregnancy and abortion and all of that is first and foremost a human issue," Hinojosa told Politico. "We have so politicized it, but it is the struggle of so many women, so many families, women who have had their hearts broken because of a pregnancy gone wrong."

I don't know if there's anything to extrapolate from all this. She hasn't defeated Abbott yet. But I'm intrigued by this campaign and the shift away from culture warring toward economic issues and nuance on divisive social ones. Especially as our Massachusetts lesbian bar COVID-19 story continues to dominate X (and The Boston Globe's article leaderboard), making us all dumber by the day. Which way, Democratic Party? Which way, lefties?

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Scenes from New York: Mayor Zohran Mamdani seems to believe the thing New Yorkers really need is not safe streets or for crazy people to be expelled from the subway cars, but rather…free opera tickets. Classic Mamdani: Just give people free stuff and hope it results in high approval ratings.

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QUICK HITS

• "A growing number of private colleges are reassessing how much they charge families to attend," reports The Wall Street Journal. "With the cost of college under scrutiny, some universities are deploying a fresh wave of financial moves to lure students—like slashing tuition by nearly half, offering 'in state' rates to compete with public institutions, and promising loan-free aid to certain families."
• "A.I. is making me a better doctor," writes Rachael Bedard for The New York Times. "And I worry that it's making doctors-in-training worse.…I don't think it's critical that my residents memorize every diagnostic protocol, just as it's no longer critical that I recall my friends' phone numbers. But I do want them to learn to hear problems the way a doctor is supposed to, as stories that contain clues that set off a cascade of cognitive associations. And I want them to develop the cardinal instincts that amount to good judgment in medicine: the ability to distinguish sick from not sick and to prioritize competing patient concerns, as well as the tact to effectively seek information beyond what a patient voluntarily reveals."
• "In the age of short, shareable video clips, TV debates offer candidates equal parts opportunity and risk: An electric moment can travel far and wide, but so can an unforced error," notes Axios. "In 10 of the most closely watched races for governor, there are no agreed-upon debates between the major-party nominees in half of them—Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Texas, according to an Axios review of scheduled debates. Four years ago, just two of those 10 gubernatorial contests went without a debate."
• Very true:

We should be incredibly grateful that our commies are the thinnest-skinned, most fragile individuals on earth. (Historically, this has not been the case, to ruinous effect.) https://t.co/jbi56NosHy

— Peter Meijer (@PeterMeijer) September 25, 2026