Gina Hinojosa won the Texas governorship on Tuesday. By Friday she had asked state officials to freeze the proposed sale of Boca Chica State Park land to SpaceX until she takes office in January. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission promptly pulled the discussion from its agenda.
She hadn’t been sworn in. She hadn’t named a cabinet. She hadn’t said a word about the border, the grid, the property-tax bills that drove half the mail in that campaign. The first lever she reached for was the one attached to Elon Musk.
On CNN with Jake Tapper, she said selling our beach to Elon Musk is almost unimaginable and unacceptable.
“Well, look, as I said before, we have to have balance. These are our beaches we’re talking about. I mean, selling our beach to Elon Musk is just something that is almost unimaginable. It’s unacceptable. Our beaches are enshrined in our Texas Constitution as being free and open to the people of Texas because they are our beaches,” she whined.
“We can have a strong working relationship with Elon Musk and his companies, but it has to be on our terms. It cannot be just running over the people of Texas. And that’s what changes now that I will be governor.”
WATCH:
Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa: "We can have a strong working relationship with Elon Musk and his companies, but it has to be on our terms"
Jake Tapper asked her about blocking the sale of a Texas state park to SpaceX, and whether Musk might leave the state over it. Her answer:
“Well, look, as I said before, we have to have balance. These are our beaches we’re talking about. I mean, selling our beach to Elon Musk is just something that is almost unimaginable. It’s unacceptable. Our beaches are enshrined in our Texas Constitution as being free and open to the people of Texas because they are our beaches."
"We can have a strong working relationship with Elon Musk and his companies, but it has to be on our terms. It cannot be just running over the people of Texas. And that’s what changes now that I will be governor.”
— Fireside Alpha (@firesidealpha) November 6, 2026
On our terms. Remember that phrase, because it’s the only honest part of the statement.
Here is what is actually at Boca Chica. A stretch of South Texas coastline that was, before SpaceX arrived, among the poorest corners of the United States. Cameron County had double-digit unemployment and a median household income far below the state average. Starbase now employs thousands of people directly — engineers, welders, technicians, machinists — and has pulled in suppliers, contractors, housing construction, restaurants, and a tourism trade that didn’t exist a decade ago. Brownsville’s population is growing for the first time in a generation. Those are not Musk’s jobs. They are Texans’ jobs, held by Texans, many of whom voted for Hinojosa.
And the company at the center of it is the reason the United States can put astronauts in orbit without buying seats from Vladimir Putin. SpaceX flies the overwhelming majority of the world’s orbital launches. It carries NASA’s crews to the space station. Starshield supports national defense. Starlink restored communications in Asheville after Helene and keeps Ukrainian units connected on the front.
Hinojosa’s position is that this operation should proceed on her terms.
The tell is what she left out. She did not say the sale price was too low. She did not identify a legal defect in the transaction or point to an appraisal. She did not propose an alternative access arrangement for beachgoers, which is how a serious person addresses a beach-access concern. She announced a freeze and framed it as putting Musk in his place.
That’s the product being sold here. Musk committed the sin of backing Trump, funding Republicans, and dropping $158 million into the Texas Senate race. Everything since has been retaliation dressed up in public-interest language: the sixteen House Democrats lining up investigations, Kara Swisher musing that he’d be in prison under a Harris administration, Elissa Slotkin’s project to frighten young conservatives out of public service, and now a governor-elect freezing a land transaction before she owns a desk.
Musk has been plain about where this leads. Live by the sword, die by the sword, he posted last month — he’ll find out who’s pulling the strings and come for them, not just the puppets.
Texas has spent fifteen years telling the country it’s where you go when your state decides to punish you for succeeding. California learned what that costs. Gina Hinojosa seems determined to find out whether it works in reverse.
