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Elections & Public Trust · Texas Governor Record
Greg Abbott is seeking a fourth term. Gina Hinojosa is challenging more than a decade of his record. Pat Dixon offers a Libertarian alternative.
Texas voters will choose a governor on November 3, 2026.
The certified general-election ballot lists three candidates:
Before comparing their promises, there’s a more basic question: What does the governor of Texas actually control?
That matters because these three candidates don’t enter the race with equivalent records.
Abbott can be evaluated against more than a decade of executive decisions. Hinojosa has a legislative record but has never exercised gubernatorial authority. Dixon has no comparable record running Texas state government.
Those differences will shape how The Texas Public Record examines this race.
A Texas governor doesn’t write laws alone.
The Legislature passes legislation. The governor can sign it, veto it or allow it to become law without a signature.
But the governor’s influence extends much further.
The governor can call special legislative sessions and determine what lawmakers may consider during them.
The office submits budget recommendations, can designate emergency legislative priorities and makes appointments throughout state government.
Those appointments affect state agencies, boards and public universities.
During declared disasters, the governor also possesses significant emergency powers.
So this election isn’t simply about what each candidate says Texas should do. It’s about who will exercise substantial executive, appointment, veto and agenda-setting authority for the next four years.
Abbott is seeking a fourth four-year term.
He was first elected governor in 2014 after serving as Texas attorney general and previously as a Texas Supreme Court justice and state district judge.
That makes his side of this election fundamentally different from his challengers’.
Abbott doesn’t have to be evaluated primarily through campaign promises. He has signed and vetoed legislation, called special sessions, issued disaster declarations and made appointments. Major portions of current Texas policy developed while he was governor.
That doesn’t mean every outcome in Texas can be attributed to Abbott. The Legislature, independently elected statewide officials, local governments, courts, federal authorities and private markets all exercise powers of their own.
But where Abbott actually exercised gubernatorial authority, there’s a record to examine.
Property taxes are again central to Abbott’s campaign.
He has proposed eliminating school property taxes for homeowners, imposing additional restrictions on increases in property values and making it more difficult for local governments to increase taxes.
Important limitation: A Texas governor cannot eliminate school property taxes by executive order.
Changes of that magnitude require legislative action, and some components could require approval from Texas voters through constitutional amendments.
So the questions aren’t simply whether Abbott wants to eliminate those taxes.
How would Texas replace the revenue? What would happen to school funding? What would lawmakers have to approve? And what would the proposal ultimately mean for state and local finances?
Those questions deserve their own examination.
Hinojosa enters the race from the Texas House.
Her existing governmental record therefore consists principally of legislation, committee work and recorded votes rather than executive actions.
Her campaign has made affordability a central issue. One of her most significant proposals is a $1,500 payment to every Texas household.
Her campaign estimates the program would cost approximately $17 billion and proposes financing it through the state’s Economic Stabilization Fund—better known as the rainy day fund.
When Hinojosa announced the proposal, the fund had stood at a record $24.8 billion as of November 2025.
Her argument is that Texas is holding more money in reserve than necessary and should return some of it directly to Texans.
But her proposal comes with the same basic reality confronting Abbott’s property-tax plan: Hinojosa could not simply become governor and send every Texas household a $1,500 check. The Legislature would have to approve it.
Her campaign says she would designate affordability as an emergency item, allowing lawmakers to consider the proposal early in the legislative session. Whether lawmakers would actually pass it is another question.
The contrast is already visible.
Abbott proposes major additional property-tax reductions, including eliminating school property taxes for homeowners.
Hinojosa proposes drawing approximately $17 billion from state reserves to provide direct payments to Texas households.
Neither proposal is something a governor could accomplish alone. Both require legislative cooperation.
And neither campaign slogan answers what happens to the money on the other side of the proposal.
If school property-tax revenue disappears, another funding mechanism would be needed to maintain whatever level of public-school spending lawmakers choose.
If approximately $17 billion is withdrawn from the rainy day fund, state reserves decline by that amount before accounting for future deposits and other fiscal changes.
Those aren’t arguments for or against either proposal. They’re fiscal consequences that belong in the discussion.
Hinojosa isn’t simply offering a different platform. She’s asking Texans to judge Abbott on decisions made during more than a decade in office.
That includes disputes involving public education, property taxes, infrastructure and the state’s relationship with local governments.
The Corpus Christi water crisis provides one recent example.
Abbott threatened state intervention as Corpus Christi struggled with decisions over its long-term water supply. Hinojosa criticized his approach and argued that state leadership had failed to adequately address infrastructure problems.
Those are competing political interpretations. The underlying governmental decisions can be examined independently. And they will be.
The general election isn’t a two-candidate race.
Libertarian Pat Dixon is also on the certified ballot.
Dixon belongs in the comparison whenever the available record supports one. But TPR won’t manufacture symmetry where it doesn’t exist.
Abbott has more than a decade of gubernatorial actions. Hinojosa has a Texas legislative record. Dixon doesn’t have a comparable record exercising Texas gubernatorial authority.
Where Dixon has documented positions, we’ll examine them as positions. Where no governmental record exists, we’ll say so rather than treating a campaign proposal as equivalent to an action taken in public office.
Abbott entered 2026 with a massive campaign treasury.
His campaign reported approximately $105.7 million in cash on hand entering the year after raising about $22.7 million during the second half of 2025.
Hinojosa entered the year with a much smaller operation.
During roughly the first 10 weeks of her campaign in late 2025, she reported raising about $1 million and loaning her campaign another $300,000.
Those figures establish a substantial difference in campaign resources at that point in the race.
They don’t establish who will win, whose policies are preferable or what the financial picture will look like by Election Day. Future campaign-finance comparisons should use the newest filings available.
Abbott can point to actions taken during more than a decade as governor. That also means claims about his leadership can be tested against actual laws, budgets, executive actions, agency records and measurable outcomes.
Hinojosa can point to her Texas House record and proposals for what she would do differently. Her campaign promises can therefore be tested against her votes, legislation and the actual legal powers of the governor.
Dixon’s documented proposals can be compared with existing Texas law and the authority of the office, but they shouldn’t be presented as an executive record he doesn’t have.
The same standard applies to all three:
A campaign tells voters what a candidate says. The public record tells voters what government actually did.
Sometimes they match. Sometimes they don’t.
This governor’s race touches nearly every major state issue:
Abbott’s record will be tested against what actually happened during his tenure.
Hinojosa’s legislative record will be tested against what she now promises as a candidate for governor.
Dixon’s documented positions will be examined without inventing a governmental record that doesn’t exist.
And when campaigns make factual accusations about one another, TPR will separate the claim from the evidence supporting—or contradicting—it.
Texas voters aren’t choosing among three candidates with equivalent résumés.
Abbott is asking voters for another four years after more than a decade exercising the powers of the governor.
Hinojosa is asking voters to move her from the Legislature into the executive office while proposing a different approach to state spending and policy.
Dixon is offering a Libertarian alternative without a comparable gubernatorial or legislative record.
The certified ballot establishes who’s running. Campaign platforms establish what they’re promising. Neither tells Texans enough by itself.
Over this series, we’ll examine the receipts behind those promises and records.
What did they propose? What did they vote for? What did they actually accomplish? What authority would the governor really have? And when a campaign makes a factual claim, does the public record support it?
That’s where this examination begins.
The Texas Public Record
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