Gina Hinojosa begins work to take office as Texas' first Democratic governor in decades

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa, the first Democrat to win the office since 1990, said Thursday she would build a bipartisan administration after her stunning upset in the midterm elections that shattered decades of GOP control in the nation's second-most populous state.

Hinojosa, who will become Texas' first Latina governor, made the pledge during her first news conference since ousting Republican Gov. Greg Abbott as part of Democrats' wave of wins, including James Talarico flipping a U.S. Senate seat.

“We are forging a new way forward,” she said. “People are tired of the divisions, tired of the fighting, tired of the culture wars.”

Hinojosa, a 52-year-old state legislator from Austin who was raised on the Texas-Mexico border, was a massive underdog. She engineered a plucky and populist challenge against Abbott, who significantly outraised her but was denied a record fourth term just two years after President Donald Trump carried Texas by double-digits.

Hinojosa said Abbott was “gracious” after her victory and committed to helping her prepare to take office in January.

The upset underlined how a glum national mood dragged down Republicans across the country, even in a stronghold where Democrats had not won in decades.

Hinojosa gained major political momentum in the last few months of a campaign that centered heavily on public education, outrage over data centers and a push to lower costs. One of the first appointments to her transition team is a former rural Republican lawmaker who opposed Abbott's push for private school vouchers, which Hinojosa has supported repealing.

Her agenda will be tested in a divided Texas Legislature, where Republicans also lost the state House but still control the Senate.

“This is not about being a Democratic administration. I’m not going to be the governor for just Democrats,” Hinojosa said. “I’m going to be the governor for all the people of Texas.”

The daughter of a former Texas Democratic Party leader, Hinojosa's own political career started in 2012 while running for a school board seat in Austin, which she says was driven by budget cuts that threatened to close her son's campus.

She was elected to the Texas House in 2016 and later became a vice chair of the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus. She worked to shed that progressive brand in her campaign for governor, shrugging off culture wars and saying she was focused on affordability.

Democratic state Rep. Christina Morales said her party would stick to those issues now that they're back in power.

“The people who flipped this House didn’t run on culture issues,” she said. “They ran on the economy. They ran on the schools.”

Wilder is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, center, takes questions during a news conference in Austin, Texas, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, center, holds a news conference in Austin, Texas, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, center, holds a news conference in Austin, Texas, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa speaks during a news conference in Austin, Texas, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Dolly Parton ’s longtime manager moved Thursday to drop a complaint that accused the late singer’s nephew who acted as her head of security with threatening her estate and its employees.

The manager, Danny Nozell, who runs She’s Alive, an entity founded to manage and protect Parton’s estate, had secured a temporary restraining order against Bryan Seaver and his security company, Squadron Augmented Protection Services, in September. Nozell was seeking to turn the order into a permanent injunction against Seaver.

A very brief filing in a Tennessee court Thursday gives no reason why the complaint is being withdrawn.

It says only that a proposed order was being drafted for the judge’s approval to dismiss the case without prejudice, meaning it can be refiled again. A court filing from a day earlier said the two sides had reached an agreement, but that gave no details either.

The first public hearing on the matter, pushed several times over the course of a month, was slated for Tuesday.

The Associated Press sent emails seeking comment from lawyers for She’s Alive, Seaver and his company.

The case exposed a serious rift in Parton's inner circle that spilled into public view in the weeks after her Aug. 25 death.

She’s Alive terminated Seaver and SAPS in early September, and the following week petitioned for the restraining order against him, arguing that his “terrorizing conduct made their continued retention untenable.”

The petition said that starting shortly before Parton’s death and continuing after, Seaver made threats and aimed them directly at She’s Alive’s “personnel, counsel, and business partners. In writing, he vowed to ‘destroy the entire brand.'”

It says he “called himself ‘literally an international arms dealer and mercenary,’” and said everyone “needs to be worried about what I might do.”

In granting the temporary order, Chancellor I’Ashea L. Myles cited Seaver’s “claimed access to weapons, experience with violence, and intention to retaliate.”

Seaver said in court filings that he considered Nozell a close friend and ally before Nozell took out the restraining order.

In an affidavit, Seaver said text messages Nozell cited as evidence of his threats were a “private conversation between two friends who were both frustrated, grieving and discussing strategy.”

“I have never threatened physical harm to Mr. Nozell, to any SAL employee, contractor, attorney, advisor, or business partner, or to anyone else associated with SAL,” Seaver said. “I have no intention of doing so.”

FILE - Dolly Parton poses at the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy Ceremony in New York, on Oct. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)