Three days after an election in which Texas Republicans vastly expanded their hold on the state, Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa announced Friday morning he will resign from his position after 12 years leading the party.
Because the party has held neither a Texas executive branch office nor either of the state's two U.S. Senate seats since the 1990s, the 72-year-old Hinojosa has for more than a decade been the de facto face of the Texas Democrats. He said he was "passing the torch" with the hope that the "next generation" can reimagine the party's strategy after the country's election of Donald Trump and after former Democratic strongholds in South Texas voted for the Republican over Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
"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," he said in a statement.
Hinojosa acknowledged "devastating defeats" in Texas and across the U.S. for Democrats in Tuesday's election and attributed them to a lack of messaging about "issues they care about most, including the economy."
"Though Democrats delivered one of the best economies our country has had, Americans just aren’t feeling it," he said.
A day after the election,
Hinojosa apologized for saying in an interview with KUT that Democrats' positions on transgender issues and immigration cost them votes.
“You have a choice as a party,” Hinojosa told the Austin NPR affiliate. “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.”