Can Hinojosa Win Texas?

Can Hinojosa Win Texas?

Outspent and lacking a big profile, Gina Hinojosa has made the Texas governor race unexpectedly competitive.

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Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) couldn’t believe what he was about to do.

Less than three months out from the midterms, Kennedy was leaving for a trip to Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. States that, as the Louisiana senator colorfully put it, “ought to be fat-guy layups for us.” His travel was a response to a very real and deeply uncomfortable situation facing the Republican Party: the looming prospect of electoral catastrophe, even in states once solidly red.

Here, too, in Texas, some Republicans are sweating: U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton, of course, whom most pollsters now put behind his Democratic rival James Talarico. But also, interestingly enough, three-term Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Abbott has beaten back insurgent Democratic challengers before, and he’ll probably do it again come November. But it will be far from easy.

Abbott has outraised and outlasted everyone the Democrats have thrown at him since 2014, and if you squint at the polling averages, this year’s vote has looked likely to produce a broadly si...