By Aarón Torres and Sarah Bahari, The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN, Texas — Republican Bo French ignited a firestorm of condemnation from Democrats and Republicans who’ve called his social media posts attacking University of Texas students sick and racist.
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Sunday’s tweets disparaging the racial makeup of students celebrating UT’s thrilling victory follows a pattern for French, whose online missives regularly focus on right-wing culture war topics.
Since becoming the GOP nominee for the Texas Railroad Commission in May, he has posted twice as much about Islam, immigration and the racial and ethnic makeup of the U.S. than about the job he seeks regulating the state’s oil and gas industry, according to a review of his X account by The Dallas Morning News.
“Deport the foreign judge,” French posted June 22, targeting a federal judge with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Trinidad and Tobago.
“Make Texas inhospitable to Muslims,” he said June 29. “If they don’t like it, they can leave before we get to the point where we remove the rest.”
Those posts — along with dozens of others — passed without criticism from Republicans. But on Sunday, French’s commentary that a photo of South Asian students celebrating a Longhorns victory revealed a “problem” touched a nerve.
René Flores, an associate sociology professor at the University of Chicago who studies immigration and public opinion, said French’s social media posts are less coded and more explicit than what is commonly seen from politicians, which could be seen as “violating the norm” in politics. But political speech during President Donald Trump’s foray into politics has revealed norms are changing.
“What we’ve seen is that some people are pretty comfortable with more explicit kinds of racial language, and they don’t necessarily get punished,” Flores said.
The News found that since French defeated Commissioner Jim Wright in the GOP runoff he posted more than 1,700 times on X, an average of 16 times a day. At least 283 of French’s posts touched on Muslims living in the U.S., mass deportation and a decline of American culture as a result of immigration. In that time frame, 122 of his posts discussed the job he is running to do — regulating and overseeing the state’s oil and gas industry as one of three commissioners.
“Bo’s rhetoric is racist and disqualifying,” said state Democratic Rep. Jon Rosenthal of Houston, French’s opponent. “I am proud to build a coalition including Republicans like Hawk Dunlap & Karl Rove to bring sanity and balance back to government.”
French did not respond to a phone call, text message or direct message on X seeking comment.
The railroad commission does not oversee immigration policy or play a role in the religious practice of Texans. French has defended his campaign strategy and previous inflammatory comments, arguing that he prevailed this election cycle because his message resonated with voters.
When discussing the railroad commission, he often attacks Rosenthal.
“My opponent wants to increase regulations and taxes on the production of the very energy we need to keep the lights on all while admitting he would prefer to work in the very unreliable green energy field,” French posted July 23.
His website campaign platform says he will stop the “Islamic invasion of Texas” and end the “DEI stranglehold” on the oil and gas industry while fighting for lower gas prices and less regulation on the sector he calls “the Texas miracle.”
Fellow Republicans called on him to delete Sunday’s posts, but they remained up as of Friday.
Others defended him.
Matt Rinaldi, a former representative from Dallas and chair of the Texas Republican Party, said Sunday afternoon that French has repeatedly pushed the envelope on immigration discourse to his advantage.
“This is not a coincidence,” Rinaldi said.
Monday morning on The Mark Davis Show (660 AM), French dismissed the criticism from fellow Republicans as politically motivated and said his post was not racist.
“It’s not racist to point out that we should be favoring Texans over foreigners,” French said, who offered no evidence beyond skin color that anyone in the photograph isn’t Texan.
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One of the students in the photo told The News he is a Texas resident and American citizen who pays in-state tuition.
A political tool
French is a manifestation of years of internal fights within the GOP, as grassroots activists have pushed the party further to the right in recent years, resulting in candidates who hold “aggressive racially motivated beliefs,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
“We tend to view Bo French as an isolated politician who has these views, but the reality is that it’s something that has been part of how Republicans have talked about these issues for at least a decade,” Rottinghaus added.
Flores said politicians frequently vilify religious or ethnic groups to distract from issues such as the economy or an unpopular war with Iran. The same happened in the 2018 midterm election, when Republicans spoke about caravans from Central and South America flooding the country, he said. Republicans have often pushed back and accused Democratic lawmakers of focusing too much on race and identity politics.
French is now using stereotypes of Asian and Muslim Americans for political advantage, Flores said. Some political leaders consider the groups an “ideal punching bag,” Flores said, because they are highly visible but represent only a sliver of the state’s population. Of the state’s roughly 31 million residents, roughly 2% are Indian and 2% are Muslim.
“The current effort is to paint Muslim Americans and Asian Americans as some kind of threat we need to rally against as a way to protect our way of life and our communities,” Flores said. “This is a really convenient tool used for electoral purposes.”
Anti-Islam messages and sentiments have popped up in Texas this year.
In McKinney, a woman last month grabbed former Mayor George Fuller and stuffed a piece of paper with an anti-Islamic message in his shirt pocket during a contentious meeting over a mosque’s expansion.
In Frisco’s June mayoral race, a candidate called Islam a “terrorist group” and South Asian immigrants “rats.” The candidate, Rod Vilhauer, lost by a wide margin.
That strategy can be effective to mobilize a party’s voters, Flores said, but it can also backfire by energizing the targeted groups and their supporters.
It’s unclear how voters will respond to French. The controversy has led to record fundraising for Rosenthal, who said his campaign has received six figures in donations. Democrats have not won a statewide seat in over 30 years.
Past silence from GOP
Sunday’s post was the first time fellow Republicans criticized French while he’s been the party’s nominee.
They have stayed silent on his other posts calling for the removal of all Muslims from the country or deporting one-third the U.S. population. In July, French posted that it’s time to “go round up all the Chinese and send them packing.”
Rottinghaus points to a few reasons: The midterm elections are less than two months away, so Republicans want to avoid “unforced errors” and also protect the party’s image with voters. Democrats are also optimistic they can win at least one statewide election, and the Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton is unusually competitive.
“French and his comments can create headaches for Republican efforts to look like a governing party that wants to develop a broader coalition of support in the general election,” Rottinghaus said.
French attacked demographic changes among UT’s student body, even though state law requires that 90% of UT freshmen be in-state residents. Republicans have been the majority party in the Legislature since 2003. Any changes at the state’s premier university would have happened under their watch, Rottinghaus said.
“Some of the people tweeting against Bo French are probably responding to the fact that they don’t want to take the blame for the kind of claims French is making,” Rottinghaus said. “Not that it’s bad or good, but that they don’t want to see efforts that they’ve undertaken to be problematic.”
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