<\/p>\n
Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French introduces Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton during a rally at the Tarrant County Republican Party Headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas on Monday, January 6, 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Emil T. Lippe\/For The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n
Thank you, Sen. John\u00a0Cornyn, for standing up for Texans.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Sunday morning, Texas\u2019 senior senator took to social media<\/a> to call out Bo French, a fellow Republican and the statewide candidate for railroad commissioner, for his unabashed racism.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what happened: As the Longhorns celebrated an incredible come-from-behind win to defeat top-ranked Ohio State, French made it clear he cared more about the color of Longhorn fans\u2019 skin than the content of the scoreboard.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cI heard UT graduation this year looked like this,\u201d French posted on social media with a photo of Longhorns cheering in the stands \u2014 students clad in burnt orange and cowboy hats, who looked to be of South Asian descent. \u201cI didn\u2019t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n Cornyn was having none of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the Republican nominee for statewide office,\u201d he posted in response<\/a>. \u201cAre other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized.\u00a0 This is how great political parties self-destruct.\u00a0 Sad.\u201d<\/p>\n To their credit, several other Republican politicians followed Cornyn\u2019s example.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Texas House Speaker\u00a0Dustin Burrows said<\/a> French\u2019s post crossed the line and told him to delete it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rep. Lacy Hull, a Houston Republican running for reelection, also called on French to delete the post<\/a> and stood up for the students. \u201cThis post breaks my heart. I see college kids cheering on their football team. I see Texans.\u201d<\/p>\n As we write this, Republican Reps. Jared Patterson, Jeff Leach and Matt Shaheen have also issued similar statements<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s a good start. Here\u2019s the next step: Republicans need to tell their voters not to support French for railroad commissioner. This wasn\u2019t an isolated incident. French has a long history<\/a> of racism and it isn\u2019t going to stop unless voters make sure he loses.\u00a0<\/p>\n If George H.W. Bush could endorse Democratic candidate Edwin Edwards<\/a> against former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke in the race for Louisiana governor, then today\u2019s Republicans should be bold enough to at least tell their base to skip over French\u2019s name. Republicans don\u2019t even have to go as far as Hawk Dunlap, who lost in the GOP primary against French and endorsed the Democratic candidate Jon Rosenthal. Just say no to Bo.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Republicans had the opportunity to shut him down in their primary, much like how Texas Democrats rejected the antisemitic Maureen Galindo<\/a> in the primary for the 35th Congressional District. Gov. Greg Abbott campaigned for the incumbent, Jim Wright. But Republicans still failed. Now the fight against French\u2019s bigotry has made it to the general ballot.<\/p>\n You could say this is one of those \u201cdo right and risk consequences<\/a>\u201d moments that Sam Houston once described, but the reality is that the policy consequences for Republicans are quite minimal. Even if Rosenthal wins, Republicans will still have a two-vote majority on the three-member Railroad Commission. Conservatives will still largely get their way no matter what. And Rosenthal will bring the useful perspective of an experienced oil and gas engineer.\u00a0<\/p>\n The bar for political courage here is very, very low. And yet many Republican candidates we\u2019ve met during endorsement screenings have failed to meet it. Perhaps this moment will convince them to finally speak up.<\/p>\n If they don\u2019t, Republicans risk the consequence of having to answer questions about why they elected an unrepentant racist to office. And the risk for all of us is that we\u2019ll have a railroad commissioner who, as Gov. Greg Abbott said<\/a> during the primary, \u201cdoesn’t know anything about oil and gas\u201d and would \u201cwreck\u201d the industry. That we\u2019ll have a man in power who doesn\u2019t want Texas to win if he doesn\u2019t like the color of the fans\u2019 skin.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Since then, Abbott has endorsed French. So has Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who once said French engaged<\/a> in \u201c[a]ntisemitism\u00a0and religious bigotry.\u201d For those wondering, Attorney General Ken\u00a0Paxton backed French<\/a> in the GOP primary.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Longhorns put up a hard fight to win on Saturday. Republicans\u2019 battle against the racists in their own party should be an easy one \u2014 but with the way things are going, don\u2019t be surprised if they choke.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French introduces Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton during a rally at the Tarrant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-435495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}