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Geez, what a difference an election makes! I must confess that I am still processing the extraordinary events of this week.
Tuesday, November 3, 2026 is a defining moment. After teaching my classes on Tuesday and finishing up at 7 PM, I made my way to East Austin to La Perla, a local, East Austin bar—packed with local politicos, eyes fixed on the television—grabbing some taco’s at Cisco’s Mexican food restaurant across the street, and watching the steady news and hearing the cheers up and down Cesar Chavez street, with folks clapping, cheering, and screaming as the news of democratic victories across the state’s counties and totals rolled in.
“Austin Texas sounds like an Eastern European city that just overthrew a dictator.”
I find myself reflecting on what feminist political philosopher Bonnie Honig (2021) describes as a politics of refusal. Refusal, in her formulation, is more than rejecting unjust political arrangements. It is a collective practice of resisting domination while creating possibilities for democratic transformation. Texans refused to accept that their political future had already been decided for them. They refused the narrative that Texas could never change. And they refused to surrender the possibility of something better.
Indeed, for the first time in more than three decades, Democrats have broken the Republican stronghold on statewide offices. Gina Hinojosa has defeated Greg Abbott, becoming the first Latina governor in Texas history. James Talarico has won a U.S. Senate seat, and Vikki Goodwin has defeated Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (Brooks, 2026).
As a Mexican American woman, educator, researcher, mother, and lifelong advocate for educational and civil rights, Hinojosa's victory is especially moving. She grew up in Brownsville, in the Rio Grande Valley, a region whose history predates the current U.S.-Mexico border. For Texas Mexicans, Mexico is hardly some distant enemy but part of a shared history, culture, and identity forged across generations along a river that both divides and connects us.
The fear and anguish generated by Trump's and Abbott's costly and inhumane border policies surely mattered in this election, as did the enduring aspirations of Mexican American families whose labor built this state, whose children were segregated and punished for speaking Spanish, and whose histories have so often been excluded from the Texas narrative.
But there is something else about Gina Hinojosa that deserves attention: her own politics of refusal, especially her refusal to be drawn into the culture-war trap.
In her October 24 interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro of The New York Times, Hinojosa explained why she identifies as an economic populist rather than emphasizing the label progressive. Her position was not a repudiation of progressive values. Rather, she recognized how political labels can become so entangled in divisive culture-war debates that they foreclose substantive conversations about the issues Texans most urgently need addressed—economic inequality, concentrated corporate power, affordability, public schools, data centers, state violence, and the well-being of working families (Garcia-Navarro, 2026).
I find this both perceptive and politically significant. For years, Texans have been drawn into seemingly endless controversies over race, gender, immigration, and curriculum while urgent questions about economic opportunity, public investment, and corporate accountability are pushed aside. Instead of debating why schools remain underfunded, we debate whether teachers can discuss racism. Instead of addressing the affordability crisis, we debate whether universities should offer degrees in Mexican American Studies or Women's and Gender Studies.
Hinojosa's refusal to take the bait is not simply clever political messaging. It represents an effort to reclaim the political agenda itself. In Honig's terms, she refuses the terms of a debate that perpetuates existing relations of power while opening possibilities for a different conversation.
Of course, refusing the culture-war framing must never mean abandoning those whose rights have been targeted by it. Civil rights, academic freedom, and economic justice are inseparable. The challenge is to defend vulnerable communities without allowing manufactured controversies to displace the broader democratic and economic agenda our state desperately needs.
This distinction matters deeply to me as an educator. Throughout my career, beginning with Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring (1999), I have examined how educational institutions reproduce inequality when they devalue students' languages, cultures, histories, and knowledge. These concerns have become increasingly urgent with the passage of Senate Bills 17 and 37 and the dismantling of academic programs at UT Austin, including the elimination of majors in Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, and Women's and Gender Studies (Edison, 2026).
I have argued that academic freedom is civil rights infrastructure because weakening the institutions that produce knowledge about inequality also weakens our ability to document discrimination and pursue remedies (Valenzuela, 2026). These struggles are not separate from Hinojosa's concerns about economic power. They are part of the same larger question: Who determines whose knowledge, interests, and futures matter?
This is precisely why I have called for moving beyond narrow economic measures of return on investment toward what I call our Return on Knowing. Public education is not merely a mechanism for workforce development. It is foundational to democratic participation, cultural understanding, scientific discovery, and the public good.
The election offers extraordinary possibilities for reconsidering policies that have undermined these purposes. But changing elected officials will not automatically restore eliminated programs, repair damaged institutions, or rebuild public trust.
Here, Honig's work offers perhaps its most important lesson: Refusal must become reconstruction. Saying no to injustice is only the beginning. We must build the institutions, relationships, and policies necessary to sustain a more just and participatory democracy.
For me, this means continuing our work through the Texas Center for Education Policy, LULAC, Black Brown Dialogues on Policy; and the work of the Latino Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education.
It also means holding our newly-elected leaders accountable—not simply applauding their victories. We must expect them to defend public education, protect vulnerable communities, challenge concentrated economic power, and restore democratic accountability in our public institutions.
Gina Hinojosa's victory reminds us that political inevitability is often nothing more than a story told by those who benefit from the status quo. Texans have demonstrated their willingness to reject that story and imagine something different.
So, yes, let us celebrate this extraordinary blue tsunami! Let us congratulate the Democrats, honor the organizers, volunteers, and voters who made it possible, and acknowledge the courage and political imagination of those who refused to give up on Texas.
But let us also remember that electoral victory is not the same as democratic transformation.
The election is over. The work of democracy is just beginning.
¡Adelante! La lucha sigue.
References
Brooks, B. (2026, November 4). ‘A mandate for change’: Democrats remake Texas politics in election rout. Reuters.
Edison, J. (2026, September 17). UT-Austin cutting majors centering Latino, Black, women and gender studies, email shows. The Texas Tribune.
Garcia-Navarro, L. (Host). (2026, October 24). What this Democrat's surge in Texas says about the midterms [Audio podcast episode]. In The Interview. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/magazine/gina-hinojosa-interview.html
Honig, B. (2021). A feminist theory of refusal. Harvard University Press.
Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. State University of New York Press.
Valenzuela, A. (2026, Sept. 19). Academic Freedom is Civil Rights Infrastructure: What UT's Elimination of Ethnic and Gender Studies Costs Us, Educational Equity, Politics, and Policy in Texas.
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