The longtime chairman of the Texas Democrats will resign after the party’s bruising election losses.
In a statement, Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said he will step down after the party’s spring meeting in March.
“On Tuesday, the Democratic Party suffered devastating defeats up and down the ballot In Texas and across the country,” Hinojosa wrote. “In the days and weeks to come, it is imperative that our Democratic leaders across the country reevaluate what is best for our party and embrace the next generation of leaders to take us through the next four years of Trump and win back seats up and down the ballot.
“That is why today I’m announcing that I’ll be stepping aside in the new year at the Spring SDEC meeting in March 2025, and passing the torch to the next generation.”
The resignation announcement comes the day after Hinojosa apologized for saying immigration and transgender issues hurt Democrats at the polls. He made the remarks in an interview with The Texas Newsroom on the morning after Election Day.
“You have a choice as a party,” Hinojosa, 72, said in the interview. “You could, for example, you can support transgender rights up and down all the categories where the issue comes up, or you can understand that there's certain things that we just go too far on, that a big bulk of our population does not support.”
He added: “If you are going to ignore the political consequences of these kinds of things, then you're asking to lose these elections in the manner that we did.”
LGBTQ rights groups and transgender advocates swiftly criticzed Hinojosa’s remarks, saying he was blaming Democrats’ most vulnerable supporters for his and the party’s failures.
Hinojosa, who has led the party since 2012, has faced challenges to his leadership in the past.
After Democrats lost big in the previous midterm elections, two women ran against him in 2022 at the state party’s convention. While they credited him for growing the party in the years he was chairman, they challenged him on his election record, saying he had not delivered enough wins in the decade he’d been in leadership.
Hinojosa beat them, however, and retained his position.
Before his tenure in party leadership, Hinojosa was a lawyer and county judge in the Rio Grande Valley. His daughter, Gina Hinojosa, is a state legislator who represents parts of Austin.
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