Sky York Journal
Jon Rosenthal got an unexpected text from a friend earlier this year: Karl Rove, the GOP strategist that George W. Bush affectionately deemed “turd blossom,” had endorsed him for Texas Railroad Commissioner.
Rosenthal was shocked to hear it, telling TPM that the possibility had been outside his “universe of thought.” But things are weird these days for Rosenthal, and for anyone following his bid to become the first Democrat in decades to sit on the Texas Railroad Commission.
First off, the job title is all wrong. Rosenthal is an oil and gas engineer; the Texas Railroad Commission is the state’s oil and gas regulator.
Second, Rosenthal finds himself in a race that he didn’t expect to be running. His opponent is Bo French, a Texas oil family scion who seems determined to make the race as little about oil and gas as possible. French has called for the deportation of 100 million people, once asked whether Jews or Muslims pose a greater threat to America, and appeared recently with Greg Bovino.
But the news that really broke containment for French came last month, when he tweeted a picture of students of South Asian descent celebrating at a UT-Austin game. “The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,” French wrote.
It led to a wave of condemnations, including Rove’s statement in support of Rosenthal. Contributions flooded in to both Rosenthal’s and French’s campaigns after the post, Texas campaign finance records show.
For Rosenthal, it reinforced how odd things had gotten in Texas politics. The son of a UT mathematician, Rosenthal described himself to TPM as a “tinkerer” who ended up working in fossil fuels after a brief stint in heavy manufacturing. That launched a 25 year career in the oil and gas industry; in 2017, he began to become involved in politics after seeing how “completely off the rails” it had gotten in the aftermath of Trump’s first election. The next year, he ran for and won a state House seat in a suburban Houston district that Republicans had held for decades.
Rosenthal described his campaigns as “consistent with my lifetime mantra of standing up to bullies and opposing bigotry and discrimination in all of its forms, which is kind of poetic because of the race that I’m in now, right?”
“If I wanted to oppose bigotry and discrimination in all of its forms, I could not have asked for a better venue for that at this time, right?” he added.
Bo French isn’t the opponent that Rosenthal thought he would be facing. When he decided to run for the Railroad Commission seat, Rosenthal believed that he would be facing the incumbent, Jim Wright. A longtime oilfield services entrepreneur, Wright was a Republican with the kind of technocratic background and approach you might expect from an industry regulator. Rosenthal envisioned a low-key campaign in which he would argue that Wright had granted permits to polluting operators, maintained conflicts of interest — allegations all within the scope of the commission’s work.
But French defeated Wright in a primary runoff in May following a campaign anchored in xenophobia and, specifically, his promise to deport 100 million people. As unclear as it is how this relates to oil regulation, some observers argue that French’s rhetoric is a vehicle to win office and carry out the only real proposal his campaign has made that falls within the commission’s ambit: roll back a rule overhauling how the industry disposes of oilfield waste. Wright supported the rule; some observers regard French’s candidacy as an effort to torpedo it.
French grew up in a Texas oil family. His grandfather cofounded the Permian basin oil show; his family owns the French Oil Company. French’s career before politics involved some time working in Dallas’ financial sector, as well as a business venture with “American Sniper” Chris Kyle that turned sour after his death.
For Rosenthal, French’s victory over Wright meant that he suddenly faced a very different kind of candidate: one explicitly aligned with the far-right, and interested in using the race as an improbable means to boost himself as a national figure among nativists. Steve Bannon, to that end, recently suggested that French represented a future of the Republican Party.
It’s not what the race is really about, Rosenthal said, calling himself a “drill, baby, drill Democrat.”
“This is a technocratic job. I mean, we’re talking about dealing with drilling permits and pipelines and chemical waste management. It’s technical, complex subject matter,” he told TPM. “I do think it’s very important to demonstrate competence and capacity for good governance on the subject. And also, that’s really the part of this that I’m really good at.”
Apart from talking about UT students of South Asian descent and deporting 100 million people, French has taken to dubbing his opponent “radical Rosenthal.” He’s tried to link Rosenthal, who is Jewish, to the Bolshevik revolution.
“Why exactly does Radical Rosenthal love Communism so much?” French asked in one tweet that included a video accusing Rosenthal of “advocating for Communism in its ‘purest form.’”
It’s rhetoric that’s extremely, shall we say, familiar to those who have read up on fascism and how it grew in the early 20th Century. Rosenthal said that he doesn’t want to engage, in part because he prefers to speak about what he knows: the finer points of oil and gas regulation and engineering.
“I’m not an expert at insulting people or inciting hate online. And if I were to engage primarily at that plane, I’d kinda be at a disadvantage,” he said.
The last time a Democrat won a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission was in 1990. What limited polling exists of the race has a tight race within the margin of error.
Rosenthal told TPM that he chose to run in 2026 because he anticipated a blue wave, and figured that with his experience in the industry and in the Texas legislature, he could present a formidable challenge. The level of vitriol and unrelated xenophobia that French has brought to the race was a surprise, bringing with it national attention on what’s typically a low-profile contest. At one point, he said that fighting to win statewide office as a Texas Democrat was a venture into the unknown.
“Nobody knows what the key to winning a statewide race for a Democrat in Texas is, and I say nobody will know until somebody actually succeeds,” he said.
