In a Republican primary upset, Bo French, a former chair of the Tarrant County Republican Party, defeated incumbent Jim Wright for a seat on the Railroad Commission.
This despite Wright’s backing from major oil and gas interests and support from Gov. Greg Abbott.
French has made a series of statements criticizing Muslims, LGBTQ Texans and diversity initiatives. Earlier this year, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference during a panel titled “Don’t Sharia My Texas,” he said Texas should ban Islam, calling it “not a religion, but a governmental structure intent on overthrowing our Constitution.”
French is now the Republican nominee for one of the three seats on one of most powerful regulatory bodies in the state. He’s set to face Jon Rosenthal, a Houston Democrat and oil and gas engineer, in the November general election.
Railroads might not matter so much to voters anymore, but what was this runoff really about, and what does the outcome say about Republican priorities when it comes to Texas energy?
Robert Downen is a senior writer at Texas Monthly and he joined Texas Standard to discuss. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Who is Bo French and what makes him stand out in today’s political landscape in Texas?
Robert Downen: So Bo French is really, I think, a kind of creature of this far right wing of the Texas GOP that really has its headquarters, or its epicenter, in Tarrant County, where as you said, he was the longtime GOP chairman. There he had run a few failed campaigns for the Texas House.
He was part of this kind of wave of Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks — two West Texas billionaires — candidates funded by them as part of their kind of campaign to push the Legislature further right. And that initially kind of failed with Bo French, but as we can see, it’s starting to work.
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Well, has French worked in the oil and gas industry? Why would he want this seat on the railroad?
You know, he comes from an oil and gas family and he has some ties to the industry, but I think when he started running for the seat, he really couched his campaign as pretty explicitly against… He wants to use the railroad commission to fight what he claims is radical Islam.
How he plans to do so is still a little bit unclear, but remains to be seen.
Incumbent Jim Wright, the fellow that French defeated, had backing from some of the biggest names in Texas oil and gas, as well as support from Gov. Greg Abbott. I’m wondering what you see French’s victory saying about where Republican primary voters are right now.
You know, I think the railroad commission is one of those things that… You know, it is a lesser-known, little-attention-paid-to body in Texas, but it means quite a bit, especially obviously if you’re in the oil and gas industry.
I think that French’s win, especially over an incumbent who had all that support, really does just signify how far right the party’s runoff and primary voters are going.
Now we’ve seen in the last few years really a concerted effort by GOP politicians and candidates to focus on Islamophobia, to focus on a whole host of, I guess, kind of different threats to Texas way of life, each of them representing about 1% of the state’s population but able to be kind of turned into a broader bogeyman that they can run against.
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It’s sort of a culture war situation there.
Sure. And I would say, you know, Bo French, I spent a lot of time looking at people who would consider themselves kind of part of the culture war. And I think Bo French is, even in that crowd, kind of an enigma.
You know, this is someone who is pretty explicitly racist, pretty explicitly nativist. I mean, this is a guy who recently talked about the spirit of Rhodesia living on.
He is, I think, pretty nakedly nativist in his rhetoric and the fact that he was able to squeak out a primary runoff win I think says a lot about the party.
Yeah, but Republicans control politics in Texas. And in November, French will face Houston Democrat Jon Rosenthal, who’s an oil and gas engineer and a state lawmaker.
And of course, Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in Texas in more than three decades. So I’m curious, realistically, what path, if any, do you see Rosenthal having?
You know, it’s tough to speculate, but I believe of all the kind of statewide primary or statewide runoffs from Tuesday, Bo French had the smallest margin of victory. And I know, you know, just in talking to people who worked with him in Tarrant County and stuff like that, he is someone who has made a lot of enemies in a lot places, whether it’s just because of the way he carries himself or his rhetoric.
You know, he is kind of a perpetual online troll always kind of seeming to be picking fights with people in the Republican Party on Twitter and what have you. And I think that has really rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
And, you know, it’s always difficult to gauge the Democrats’ statewide chances. But I think that this is actually, if you look at the kind of momentum coming from James Talarico and some of the top-of-the-ticket stuff dissatisfaction with Trump, I don’t think it’s totally implausible that they could make this competitive.
