On May 26, former Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French eked out a 1-point victory over incumbent Jim Wright in the Republican runoff for a seat on the state’s poorly named oil and gas regulatory agency: the Railroad Commission (RRC). As the Texas Observer has reported, French, a 56-year-old oil-industry nepo baby, received over half his primary campaign war chest from a political action committee funded by Christian nationalist oil magnate Tim Dunn and historically by hard-right oil baron Farris Wilks.
French has run perhaps the most far-right campaign of any major Texas GOP candidate in recent memory: He’s called for the denaturalization and deportation of 100 million Americans (about a third of the country), including all Muslims, in violation of constitutional protections safeguarding religious freedom. He’s specifically taken aim at two sitting state legislators, calling for state Representatives Salman Bhojani and Gene Wu to be denaturalized and deported. Moreover, French remains one of the state’s most vocal proponents of the racist “great replacement theory,” which purports a conspiratorial effort by liberals or a secretive cabal to replace the descendants of white settlers with immigrants. He has also centered his campaign platform on deregulating one of the state’s already most industry-captured agencies and ending whatever might be left of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
