Governor Greg Abbott’s campaign recently targeted his opponent, Gina Hinojosa, for allegedly supporting transgender procedures for children. The attacks amid the Texas gubernatorial campaign sparked backlash against Abbott, as many residents on social media accused him of using trans people as a way to target his adversary due to his lack of real proposals.
As reported by the Daily Signal, a new press release from Abbott’s campaign says that “Radical Gina would rather trans your kids than protect them,” calling the politician “a rubber stamp for the Socialist Democrats and their gender insanity.”
Hinojosa does, indeed, have a record of supporting trans rights. In 2023, she voted against Senate Bill 14, which aimed at prohibiting Texas-licensed physicians and other health care providers from providing gender-transition procedures for people under 18 years old. She also voted against House Bill 1106 and Senate Bill 12, which also placed restrictions on facilitating transitions.
Texas Reacts to Abbott Attacks on Hinojosa
Redditors on r/Texas criticized Abbott for using anti-trans rhetoric to target Hinojosa. Someone argued: “To my knowledge, Hinojosa has not mentioned trans people in this race, which is very wise. Why are republicans obsessed with trans people?” Another person answered: “Because they have nothing else to run off of besides fear and taxes. If not trans people, who else is the boogie man they can point to and say they’re going to eliminate without having actual pushback?”
According to someone else, “The goal here is to force her to respond. They want her to issue some kind of boilerplate statement about ‘Equal rights for all Texans.’ Once she does that, they’ll run an ad with her face next to a dude in a dress during every college football game between now and Election Day.”
Another Texan wrote: “I’d ask just how stupid Abbott thinks the average Texas conservative voter might be but this pretty much answers the question, doesn’t it?”
Most people agreed that targeting something the candidate was not even talking about during the campaign was fear-mongering, and one person summarized the discussion’s overall feeling with an old anecdote from their own life: “My dad says Republicans are like the old 1960s Batman series. They have a rotating cast of villains (abortion! gays! feminists! minorities!) and every election cycle is just another episode where the announcer yells, ‘Tune in next week! Same Bat-Channel, same Bat-Panic!’”
