|
White's Early Exit from Governor's Contest
Could Put Hinojosa on Track for March Win
Texas House & Senate Races Rankings
Crystal Ball for 2026 Texas Elections
Capitol Inside
January 5, 2026
Texas Democrat Andew White came to grips with political inevitability on Monday when he bowed out of a crowded field of candidates for governor and pitched his support to Austin lawmaker Gina Hinojosa in a move that may have cleared the path for her to win the nomination in the March primary election without the need for overtime.
White - the son of a Democrat who served as governor in the 1980s - said he could not raise a sufficient amount of campaign cash to be competitive at the level he'd envisioned in September before Hinojosa emerged as a rival in the primary. White pulled the plug on the bid that he'd launched in September with a call for a united front against Republican Governor Greg Abbott in the fall of 2026.
"With the primary just weeks away, the responsible choice is to come together to defeat Greg Abbott and protect our schools, hospitals and infrastructure,” White said in a statement. “I’m proud to endorse Gina Hinojosa for governor, and I look forward to voting for her twice: once in March and again in November.”
White said he was deferring to Hinojosa so she could save her war chest for a general election battle with a heavily-armed incumbent who has the ability to raise unlimited sums of cash in a bid for a record-setting third term as the state's top leader. The early exit made it possible for White to save face and money in a race for a Democratic nomination that Hinojosa has appeared to be a strong betting favorite to win from the moment she entered the ring.
White ran a respectable race in his first bid for governor in 2018 - losing in a Democratic primary runoff to Lupe Valdez by almost 7 percentage points that spring. Abbott defeated Valdez by 13 points in the general election that year. But U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and the other Republicans in statewide races had much closer encounters with Democrats who they beat by three to six percentage points in the first midterm election on President Donald Trump's watch.
White's attempt at a comeback ended with a whimper that left Chris Bell as the only Hinojosa first-round rival with experience in the political arena. The cast of Democrats who are vying for governor as political unknowns includes three candidates who are retirees, one tax strategist, a manager and another who lists the occupation as D.C.
Bell is a former Houston City Council member and mayoral contender who served one term in Congress from 2003 to 2005 before being targeted by Texan Tom Delay as the U.S. House majority leader in a redistricting effort that he persuaded GOP lawmakers in Austin to undertake. Bell was unseated by Al Green in the primary that year.
But Bell sought to bounce back with a successful bid for the nomination for governor in 2006 when incumbent Republican Rick Perry faced a pair of well-known independents in the fall as well. Perry was re-elected with only 39 percent of the vote while Bell finished second with 30 percent as Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman had 30 percent combined. But Bell hadn't been active in the political arena for nearly two decades when he filed to run for governor in December. His chances of forcing Hinojosa into a runoff might be slim if he stays in the race until the end.
Andrew White hoped to follow his father's footsteps into the public arena but had no way to fill his shoes. Mark White worked his way up the ladder - winning the attorney general's job in 1978 before ousting trailblazing Republican Bill Clements from the governor's office four years later.
Clements, the first Republican governor in Texas since Reconstruction, exacted payback in 1986 when he unseated White in a bitter rematch that featured wild sidebars like Karl Rove's claims of being bugged by Democrats. White's comeback bid in 1990 ended with a third place finish in the Democratic primary election when the race's eventual winner Ann Richards advanced to a runoff with then-AG Jim Mattox.
more to come ...
| 
