Lina Hidalgo never thought about running for office until the angry and often ugly divisiveness of the 2016 presidential election made her change her mind. “I decided,” she said, “that actually what I wanted to do was change government from within, that that was more effective. So many of us were galvanized.”
In 2018, at age 27, she beat an 11-year incumbent to become the first woman and the first Latina elected as Harris County’s county judge, who serves as the presiding officer on the Commissioners Court, the county’s main governing body. The Commissioners Court oversees the $5 billion budget of the nation’s third largest county, which encompasses the city of Houston and a number of neighboring communities. Hidalgo sought the role with the specific goal of ensuring that county funds are spent in alignment with the community’s values and priorities.
“When I sit at the dais, I think I bring my perspective not just as a woman, not just as a young person, but also as someone with this lived experience of [being] an immigrant, of having different perspectives from different places,” said Hidalgo, who was born in Colombia and also lived in Peru and Mexico before moving to the United States when she was 15.
Earning a BA in political science from Stanford University, Hidalgo went on to work in Thailand for an NGO advocating for press freedoms. Back in the states, she worked as a Spanish translator at the Texas Medical Center in Houston while volunteering for the Texas Civil Rights Project. Hidalgo was enrolled in a joint Harvard/NYU public policy and law program when she decided to run for office. In her current position, she has worked to make voting easier and meetings more open and inclusive. Moreover, Hidalgo has steered Harris County through multiple natural disasters while championing proactive solutions like flood mitigation and smart development standards to reduce future risks.
