With less than a month until Election Day, Texas Republicans and Democrats are taking sharply different approaches to one of the biggest strategic questions of the 2026 campaign: How much should candidates talk about the culture wars?
Republicans have hardly abandoned pocketbook issues. Gov. Greg Abbott has rolled out a property tax plan, while Attorney General Ken Paxton has promoted his four-point “Protecting the Texas Promise” tax proposal.
But alongside taxes and affordability, Republicans are leaning heavily into debates over gender, abortion, religion, immigration and other social issues. Democrats, meanwhile, increasingly argue that campaigns should spend less time fighting those battles and more time talking about the cost of living.
The divide was on full display at the Republican National Convention in Dallas last month, where speeches mixed economic messages with attacks on Democrats over transgender policies, Islam, sharia law and what Republicans described as an increasingly radical political left.
“This election is very clear: It’s the mainstream versus the extreme,” U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX-26) told convention attendees.
Republicans put social issues front and center
Paxton used part of his convention speech to target his Democratic U.S. Senate opponent, state Rep. James Talarico (D-Austin), highlighting controversial statements Talarico made in the past.
Paxton quoted Talarico as describing himself as a “Christian who hates Christianity” and saying God is “nonbinary.”
“I must have missed that verse in the Bible,” Paxton said.
He also accused Talarico of being “really obsessed with transitions” before telling the crowd, “How about we transition him and his crazy ideas right out of Texas?”
Talarico has acknowledged that some of his previous comments missed the mark. In a May interview with NBC, however, he accused Paxton of using those remarks to distract voters from controversies surrounding the attorney general.
The same strategy is playing out in the governor’s race.
Abbott has labeled Democratic challenger state Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin) “Gender Bender Gina” while attacking her voting record on policies involving parents and children's gender identities.
“This is reprehensible and disqualifying for anyone seeking to lead the state of Texas,” Abbott wrote in a social media post.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has similarly targeted Democratic opponent state Rep. Vikki Goodwin (D-Austin) over transgender participation in women’s sports, calling her a “woke Democrat, out of touch with Texas.”
Not every Republican message on cultural issues has received support from within the party.
Texas Railroad Commission Republican nominee Bo French faced criticism last month after posting a photo showing the University of Texas student section at a football game, with several students of Indian descent in the foreground.
“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,” French wrote.
Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) called on French to delete the post, saying Republicans should not demean people based on race or ethnicity.
Abbott also pushed back, saying the students’ celebration showed “a way that Texans unite,” while maintaining that Texas can simultaneously pursue tougher immigration policies and restrictions on H-1B visas at state universities.
Democrats went further, accusing French of racism and calling on Abbott to condemn him.
Democrats want to get “back to basics”
Hinojosa has made the case that Democrats have spent too much time responding to Republican attacks on cultural issues instead of defining themselves around economic concerns.
“We're not doing the culture wars. We are talking about how we're going to deliver for Texans, how we're going to make life easier for working families,” Hinojosa told Politico last month.
She described her strategy as a “back to basics” approach centered on economic opportunity.
That does not mean Hinojosa has completely avoided divisive social issues.
One of her campaign ads touches directly on abortion through the deeply personal story of her first child. Hinojosa recounts deciding to continue her pregnancy after receiving a fatal diagnosis and losing her daughter shortly after birth.
“I chose her,” Hinojosa says in the ad.
Asked about the language by CNN, Hinojosa reiterated her support for abortion rights and said her voting record makes her position clear.
“That was my choice,” she said.
During The Texas Tribune’s 2026 TribFest, Hinojosa also resisted labeling herself a progressive.
“I consider myself a populist, an economic populist,” she said.
Other Texas Democrats are making a similar argument.
House Democratic Caucus leader Gene Wu (D-Houston) said voters increasingly see their economic concerns as more important than “the nonsense red meat cultural wars that we fight all the time.”
Wu argued that Democrats paid a political price for their approach to social issues in 2024 and predicted Republicans could learn a similar lesson this year.
“While everyone is screaming about food prices, diesel prices, and everything else, they're talking about trans kids playing sports,” Wu said while discussing Patrick’s attacks on Goodwin.
“I might care about that [issue], but not right now,” he added.
State Sen. Carol Alvarado (D-Houston) pointed to controversies surrounding data centers and Flock cameras as examples of issues capable of crossing partisan lines. She accused Republicans of trying to fall back on “the same tired-ass campaigns — bathrooms and who's on what team in sports.”
Republicans say Democrats are running from their records
Republicans reject the idea that talking about cultural issues is a distraction.
State Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston), the Republican candidate for attorney general, argued that Democrats are attempting to moderate their positions because they know voters disagree with them.
“Look at James Talarico. He is flip-flopping on these because he knows his radical, extreme positions are out of step with Texans,” Middleton told The Texan.
Middleton also criticized Democratic opponent state Sen. Nathan Johnson (D-Dallas) over Senate Bill 8, the Texas Women’s Privacy Act. Middleton authored the legislation, which requires certain publicly funded private spaces to be separated according to biological sex.
“They're in a war against common sense, and it's a war that they are losing,” Middleton said. “That's why they do not want to talk about it.”
State Rep. Brent Money (R-Greenville) similarly rejected the argument that Republicans are hurting themselves by emphasizing abortion, LGBT issues or Islam.
“The people who are wrong on abortion and LGBT and Islam are also wrong on the economic issues,” Money told The Texan.
Money said Republicans should connect their positions on social and economic issues rather than treat them as competing messages. At the same time, he acknowledged that cultural issues alone will not be enough to win.
“We need to tell people how we, as Republicans, are going to help make their lives better,” he said.
Money also accused Talarico and Hinojosa of using more moderate campaign rhetoric to obscure what he views as their actual political records.
State Board of Education Chairman Aaron Kinsey (R-Dist. 15) made a similar argument, saying Republicans are “not trying to go to extremes,” but instead trying to return to traditional principles.
The SBOE itself has become a major front in Texas' culture wars following the adoption of revised social studies standards and a statewide reading list. Those debates have included disputes over biblical texts and the teaching of Islam.
Kinsey argued that Democrats are changing their rhetoric because voters have rejected the positions the party embraced in previous years.
Which message wins in November?
The disagreement reveals a broader gamble being made by both parties.
Democrats are betting that voters worried about groceries, housing, taxes and other everyday expenses have little appetite for another election dominated by fights over bathrooms, gender and other cultural flashpoints.
Republicans are betting that the distinction is artificial — that voters can care about affordability while also caring deeply about schools, sports, religion, gender and other social issues.
And despite their different strategies, candidates on both sides are showing there are limits to a purely economic campaign. Democrats continue to address abortion and other social questions, while Republicans are pairing their culture-war arguments with promises on taxes and affordability.
That leaves Texas voters to decide not only which side they agree with, but which issues matter most when they cast their ballots.
