Hyde Park, with its orderly layout, Old Austin grace, and nearness to the University of Texas campus, is a very Kathie Tovo kind of place. Tovo’s campaign signs stand at the edges of lawns throughout the neighborhood.
I followed the candidate on a recent April afternoon as she canvassed the area, knocking on doors in the runoff election for Texas House District 49. Half the time, no one answered. In those cases, Tovo pressed a pen onto a Post-it note and wrote a personalized message in a neat, looping hand, leaving it at the door.
When there was an answer, the former City Council member stood back, in her element. She varied her pitch depending on the person before her. An older woman mentioned traffic; Tovo assured her that she had supported the Project Connect transit project, which would help. A young man appeared in workout clothes; Tovo made sure he heard about her votes for hike and bike trails. Someone she knew from her work on Council asked her to sit and have a glass of water; the conversation veered away from politics, to how to safely remove a beehive from a fallen tree.
It was one of several times a voter recognized Tovo. “Having lived here for as long as I have in Austin, and having been part of so many different communities – from the Austin school district community, to the work I did at the city, to different community organizations I’m part of, and my church family – I do tend to run into somebody I know,” she said. “It’s especially nice when I’m block walking to come across people I may not have seen in several decades.”
Tovo is leaning on these connections in her contest with Montserrat Garibay, a teacher and labor organizer, in the May 26 runoff for House District 49. HD 49 is a thin, tilting rectangle stretching between I-35 and MoPac from Rundberg Lane in the north to Slaughter Lane in the south. It contains more of the core of the city than the other three Austin districts in the Texas House, taking in Downtown, the Capitol, and UT. It also contains practically all of Council’s District 9, which Tovo represented from 2015-2023.
“It is really a mix,” Tovo said, as we walked to the next door. “It’s economically diverse, ethnically diverse, majority renter. You have a lot of younger voters. And when I represented District 9, we had at that time 40% of the individuals who were experiencing homelessness in the Downtown area. And they were important constituents, and my office really prioritized those constituents.”
Tovo grew up on Long Island, the daughter of a public school teacher. She arrived in Austin in 1991, not knowing a soul, to attend the University of Texas. She told us she fell in love with UT’s American Studies and Women’s Studies courses. She wound up earning a Ph.D. and teaching rhetoric and writing composition at the university and in Puerto Rico for a decade. She then married, adopted two daughters, and settled in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood, though she now lives near West Campus.
It was the early 2000s and gentrification was transforming Bouldin Creek, pushing out working-class families, artists, and musicians. Tovo began serving on task forces for the Austin Independent School District and the city, acquiring the knowledge that can prepare a person for elected office.
“I was very passionate about affordable housing and the way in which our neighborhoods were changing,” Tovo said. “I saw decisions coming out of our City Council at that time that were really prioritizing corporate interests over those of everyday Austinites, and also prioritizing those corporate interests and corporate dollars over our environment. And I wanted to do something to change it.”
Tovo joined Council in 2011 and went on to serve 12 years there, earning a reputation for meticulous preparation and command of detail. She was part of a bloc of Council members who stymied the adoption of CodeNEXT, a proposal that would have allowed larger housing developments in existing neighborhoods. At the same time, she supported rule changes that permitted housing to be mixed with commercial projects in some parts of town. She supported sanctioned campsites for homeless people but opposed allowing them to camp in public spaces. She said she is most proud of her work in support of affordable housing, the environment, education, and in the creation of the Sobering Center, a facility providing an alternative to jail for people arrested for intoxication offenses.
She hopes, if elected, to expand food access in HD 49 and challenge the Republican Party’s takeover of public education, including higher education. As she told one prospective voter, “I’m going to work as hard as I did on the City Council and do everything I can to really stop the terrible Republican policies that are coming through.”
I met Montserrat Garibay on another glorious April afternoon as she knocked on doors in the Crestview neighborhood, south of Anderson Lane. Most of the people who answered her knock were unfamiliar with Garibay. She used a standard pitch to introduce herself.
“I’m Monserrat Garibay, and I’m running for House District 49,” she told them. “I am a bilingual educator and, most recently, I worked under the Biden administration at the U.S. Department of Education. So I have experience at the city, the state, and the national level. We have been endorsed by Congressman Greg Casar, former state Senator Wendy Davis, and most of the Austin ISD school board and City Council. I’m a big advocate of public education, and I have all the skills necessary to start working.”
In between visits with voters, Garibay told me the story of her life. She said her mother escaped an abusive relationship with her father in the early 1990s, moving her and her sister from Mexico City to Austin when Garibay was 12 years old.
“We were undocumented,” Garibay said. “Didn’t speak a word of English. We went to Murchison Middle School and Anderson High School. And the reason why I became a teacher is Mrs. [Cristina] Hernandez. She was just wonderful. We were in her ESL class, and there were kids from all over, like the United Nations. She taught my sister and me English in one year.”
After Garibay graduated from high school, her mother’s boss sponsored her as an international student. Garibay attended Austin Community College for two years, then transferred to the University of Texas, where she earned a degree in bilingual education. From there, the Austin Independent School District sponsored her for an H1-B visa, which allowed her to work as a preschool teacher. Garibay finally became a full U.S. citizen in 2012, 20 years after arriving in Austin.
That year was life-changing for Garibay in other ways. She campaigned for Gina Hinojosa in her run for a spot on the AISD Board of Trustees, as Hinojosa sought to replace the trustees who had voted to close her son’s school. It was Hinojosa’s first foray into politics and Garibay’s first time casting a vote in an election. Hinojosa was elected to represent HD 49 in 2016 and is now challenging Republican incumbent Greg Abbott for governor.
Garibay stood for election herself in 2012, joining her mentor, Ken Zarifis, as they ran for vice president and president of Education Austin, the union representing AISD’s teachers and staff. Garibay conducted clinics to help eligible immigrants become citizens. The clinics attracted the attention of Rick Levy, then president of the Texas chapter of the AFL-CIO. The local labor federation hired her to do similar work for the group in 2017. In 2021, members of President Joe Biden’s transition team called to ask Garibay to apply for a position in the Department of Education. She said she thought the call was a joke at first. She went on to become Biden’s senior adviser for labor relations, serving as a liaison between the secretary of the Department of Education and the unions.
“I helped with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program,” Garibay said. “We helped 1 million firefighters, social workers, and teachers get their loans forgiven. It was so powerful to hear these firefighters who had made payments for 10 years, but they still had hundreds of thousands on their loans – and then their loans were forgiven. They were like, ‘I can actually buy a house, I can actually have a family, get married.’ It was the best thing – the federal government, working for people.”
Tovo’s and Garibay’s days start early and end late. They spend their mornings making fundraising calls, something that can’t be avoided. Then it’s off to canvass. Each candidate spent four hours knocking doors on the days I walked with them. Evenings are for fundraisers, voter forums, and endorsement meetings.
Both candidates say they are thrilled to be running for Gina Hinojosa’s old seat, in part because Hinojosa has become one of Texas’ strongest defenders of public education. Both want to increase the state funding provided to schools, end school vouchers and book bans, increase teacher pay, and de-emphasize the STAAR assessment test. Garibay expressed her support for universal, full-day pre-K and bilingual education.
Both candidates are also prioritizing affordability, expanding access to healthcare, and protecting civil liberties. They are eager to work with Rep. Donna Howard, who Tovo said is sometimes referred to as the dean of the Central Texas delegation. Like Tovo, Howard has a reputation as a meticulous researcher who is able to maintain collegial relations with Republicans, something the candidates consider necessary since Democrats will almost certainly remain the minority party for the foreseeable future. Tovo said she balanced opposing viewpoints on Council. Garibay said she learned to conduct high-stakes negotiations at Education Austin and in the Biden administration.
Both candidates deplore the violence and civil rights violations of Trump’s ICE deportations.
“Those are issues everybody cares about in the district,” Tovo said. “They’re concerned about their neighbors. They hate what’s going on with ICE. They want the attacks on immigrants to stop.”
Garibay said she sees ICE’s black vans as they detain people near her Rundberg home in the mornings, when she goes out to jog. Her husband always reminds her to take her proof of citizenship. She said that if elected she will be a voice for the immigrants who are afraid to call the police or pick up their children from school. She added that her race to represent HD 49 proves that the American Dream is still alive, using a phrase that used to be common: “In this country, a person can be anything they want to be.” And she said that she wants to represent the working people of the district, because she’s one of them.
“I’m not gonna be rich, ever,” Garibay said. “But at least this is one way where I get to give back – because I’ve received so much.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct that Montserrat Garibay attended Murchison Middle School, not Martin Middle School. We also corrected information that indicated Rick Levy hired Garibay, when it was in fact the Texas AFL-CIO in general. The Chronicle regrets the errors.
This article appears in May 1 • 2026.
