Want to keep Texas red? Say no to Bo French.
Most sports fans dream of the kind of moment that happened in Austin last weekend. Down 20 to start the fourth quarter, three unlikely touchdowns and a hundred thousand rust-tinged strangers losing their religion. John Steinbeck once called Texas "a nation in every sense of the word," and there it stood, hoarse and singing, ever under the Eyes of Texas.
By morning, a photo of a jubilant cohort of Stetson-wearing South Asian students hooting and hollering shot through social media. Their Longhorn pride ignored, the caption pinned by Bo French, the GOP’s nominee for railroad commissioner, crassly deconstructed the revelry: He complained that the Texas students were a “problem.”
Texas is not a bloodline, and it isn’t even the land beneath our feet. John Steinbeck called it an idea, a state of mind. Some are born and reared into it, others come by it naturally and get here as quick as possible. But a “Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner,” Steinbeck wrote — never understood, always longing for those ever-present stars, even amid the city lights, and the opportunity that lives underneath them.
No one in that photo was a foreigner. They were home. True Texans in every sense of the word.
But Bo French reads from a different gospel. One that wishes to alienate — in every sense of the word.
In the May local elections, every one of the eleven local candidates French's party committee endorsed in Tarrant County's three largest cities lost. Tarrant County is, ostensibly, red, but French’s picks still somehow failed to win. Consider it proof that French’s beliefs are a political loser.
John Huffman, Southlake's former mayor, urged fellow Republicans not to vote for French for railroad commissioner: "I know it hurts to lose, but it's for the best interest of Texas that we sit this one out."
In July French posted, "Ok boys, it's time to go round up all the Chinese and send them packing!" He has called for deporting 100 million people — arithmetic that only works if the buses carry away every immigrant, including people with green cards, naturalized citizens and their U.S.-born children.
Line up the posts and a picture shows itself: an insular tribe, an enemy list that never closes and a purity bar nobody clears for long.
Call it what it is. Evil. The old, specific kind that has always propped up the worst actors in our history.
But this isn’t French’s first foray into these waters. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
Just last month, he attacked a Republican officeholder in Fort Bend County. Ali Sheikhani serves as Precinct 3 constable. He is my constable.
Sheikhani dropped everything to come to Texas: He arrived from Pakistan as a student, earned citizenship and runs a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Then he pinned on a badge, worked his way up, and ran for office in a precinct unfriendly to Republicans.
His money and his margins helped Republicans win countywide races nobody expected to win. In August an out-of-state outfit called RAIR Foundation USA smeared him as an "Islamic Pakistani operative" and warned that Texas law enforcement had been "Pakistanified."
French amplified the video and marveled at the "third worldery” it showed.
Around here French’s post read as a notice: Come home to Texas, build it, defend it, and the Napoleon of Twitter/X will use you as a pawn in his white-identity campaign.
For Republicans, the math is simple. The Railroad Commission has three members; losing one means there’s still a Republican majority and nothing changes about how Texas is governed.
On the other hand, give Bo French a statewide platform for six years to make his politics the party’s brand, and Republicans will spend the next decade losing elections they should win.
So take the permission, both halves of it.
Republican voters: A blank line on one race is not a gift to Democrats; it is a quarantine that saves our own party.
Officeholders and nominees: Naming evil inside our coalition is not disloyalty; it is how coalitions survive. It also happens to be the right thing to do.
Nationalists like French hope to build a dedicated, insular group, declare a minority the enemy, and redraw the line whenever they need a new target. Last month it was my constable. Last week it was college kids at a football game. Next week, it could be you.
Texas is the standing rebuttal — the nation anyone can join by loving it hard enough. A man who collaborates against his own nation from the inside has a natural home. It is not Texas; it's Vichy.
The University of Texas promises every freshman that what starts here changes the world. Whether they knew it or not, those students going about their ordinary college experience did just that.
My prediction and my hope: Bo French becomes the first — and only — Republican in 30 years to lose a statewide race in Texas.
Until then, Bo, sing along, because the school song has never been more literal. The eyes of Texas are upon you. All the livelong day.