{"id":440999,"date":"2026-09-19T11:48:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T11:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/440999\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T11:48:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T11:48:20","slug":"karl-rove-wont-vote-for-texas-gop-candidate-bo-french-after-ut-posts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/440999\/","title":{"rendered":"Karl Rove won\u2019t vote for Texas GOP candidate Bo French after UT posts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Longtime Republican Karl Rove said he&#8217;s not voting for Texas Railroad Commission nominee Bo French.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The former adviser to President George W. Bush said he&#8217;s voting for Democratic nominee Jon Rosenthal in the 2026 midterm election, breaking a decadeslong pattern of voting for Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>On Sept. 13, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/bofrench\/status\/2099118916282810552?s=20\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow\">French shared a photo<\/a> of a group of students of South Asian descent in the stands and wrote: \u201cLike body-cams exposed criminals, social media is exposing how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners. It\u2019s everywhere and far worse than any of us could imagine.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In a separate post using the same photo, French wrote that the image showed how UT graduation had changed and said the situation was \u201cobviously far worse than anyone imagined.\u201d He later defended the comments, saying families in Texas cannot get into UT because the university prioritizes foreigners over Texans.<\/p>\n<p>Under Texas law, UT Austin reserves 90% of its freshman spaces for Texas residents, with 10% reserved for out-of-state and international students.<\/p>\n<p>French\u2019s posts drew criticism from prominent Texas Republicans, including Sen. John Cornyn, House Speaker Dustin Burrows and former House Speaker Dade Phelan. Some Republicans also defended or declined to condemn him, making the controversy a broader intraparty dispute.<\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/opinion\/why-im-voting-for-a-texas-democrat-4c835d2d?sid=682b5b4f9a69bd78a41ab031&amp;ss=A&amp;st_rid=9bf4c27f-acb3-4b79-be29-92905b90463e&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=narrative&amp;utm_campaign=stsm%20%7C%20texas%20take\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Wall Street Journal<\/a> op-ed &#8220;Why I&#8217;m Voting for a Texas Democrat,&#8221; Rove said that voices like French&#8217;s are harmful to the Republican Party.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These people are diminishing the Republican Party, not building it,&#8221; Rove wrote. &#8220;I&#8217;ll have no part of it. This November, I&#8217;ll vote for only the second Democrat in my life. The first was Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock in 1994, because I thought he would work with Republicans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Railroad Commission regulates the state\u2019s oil and gas industry, not railroads. Its Oil and Gas Division oversees exploration, production and transportation of oil and natural gas in Texas.<\/p>\n<p>Rosenthal also criticized French\u2019s post, saying on CNN this week that his comments were \u201ctruly shameful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u200bWhen GOP architect Karl Rove breaks a 30-year voting streak to endorse our campaign, it proves this race isn\u2019t about party lines, it\u2019s about competence vs. chaos,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Longtime Republican Karl Rove said he&#8217;s not voting for Texas Railroad Commission nominee Bo French.\u00a0 The former adviser&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-440999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440999","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=440999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}