Attendees listen to speakers at the Voto Latino “Ready, Go, Vote,” rally for Democratic candidates Gina Hinojosa for Texas governor, James Talarico for the U.S. Senate, and Bobby Pulido for the U.S. House, in Weslaco, Texas, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026, ahead of the midterm elections. (Photo credit: AP Photo/Michael Gonzalez)

In 2003, I worked in the Texas Senate as an aide to Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, a Democrat who represents the Rio Grande Valley and Corpus Christi. I will never forget the then U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay being whisked past us on the Senate floor by Republican senators. You could feel their giddy excitement. Delay had a smug, conquering-hero energy about him, with the sly smile of a crocodile, as they escorted him to a back room in the Senate to oversee his controversial mid-decade redistricting plan to win Republican congressional seats. That’s when I first learned about gerrymandering and terms like “cracking” and “packing” voters. It was a bloodbath for Democrats. Austin’s Democratic voters were lumped into a long skinny strip of a congressional district, that some pundits nicknamed the “fajita strip” because it went all the way to the border city of McAllen — more than 300 miles away. What Delay’s map did was disempower Latino voters, and it wiped out Texas’ congressional Democrats. The age of Republican one-party rule in Texas was cemented.

I left politics and returned to journalism at the Texas Observer, an independent nonprofit magazine, where I wrote endless stories each election season about Texas “turning blue” or even “purple.” Republicans, however, have held on tight to Texas. But 23 years after witnessing Delay’s tumultuous arrival in the Texas Senate, I can say that this midterm election genuinely hits different. In this week’s piece by Michael Gonzalez in Brownsville, gubernatorial Democratic candidate Gina Hinojosa is ahead, in some polls, of the incumbent Republican Greg Abbott, who is running for a fourth term as governor. This would have been unheard of in previous elections.

In the U.S. Senate race, James Talarico has an even stronger chance of beating the corruption-addled Ken Paxton, who has President Trump stumping for him on the campaign trail as his polling numbers continue to crater. If you follow Texas politics closely, you get used to disappointment, and you learn to be cautious in your pronouncements of any seismic change from what’s been the status quo for nearly 30 years. But this midterm, after Latinos and the border took a wild swing in 2024 for Donald Trump and MAGA, they will be a decisive vote for Gina Hinojosa (no relation to Senator Hinojosa, my former boss) and James Talarico. Could this finally be the year?

This Week in The Border Chronicle:

Can the Texas Border Flip the Governor’s Race?

Brownsville-raised Gina Hinojosa is gaining ground on Greg Abbott by tapping into voter concerns over the economy, Operation Lone Star, data centers and the costs of rapid growth in South Texas. By Michael Gonzalez

The Democrat Dilemma: Border Contradictions and the Midterm Elections

Will the predicted “blue wave” foster a shift away from the enforcement-heavy status quo, or will it perpetuate the decades-long alignment on border militarization? By Todd Miller