Don’t read Bo French’s announcement that he’s running for the Texas Railroad Commission as a simple campaign launch. It is more accurately a MAGA rat leaving a sinking ship.
Bo has been a failed MAGA State House candidate, a destructive MAGA activist, and a loose-cannon Republican Party Chair in Tarrant County for the past decade – a decade where Democrats steadily pushed Tarrant from a safely Republican county to a toss-up county on the verge of flipping to favor Democrats.
While serving as Republican Chair, Bo’s efforts helped more than hindered Democratic efforts. Key top-of-the-ballot Statewide Democratic candidates have carried Tarrant County in each general election since 2018. In local elections last spring, Bo-backed candidates were wiped out across the board. Even in the disappointing 2024 general election where Democrats underperformed nearly everywhere, Democratic Senate nominee, Colin Allred, carried Tarrant over Ted Cruz. The single local constable win Bo cites in his announcement was the product of a redrawn and racially gerrymandered district and nothing else.
Bo knows it too. Staying Republican Party Chair in Tarrant means he takes the fall for the Democratic wins building in Tarrant County. Bo would rather take his hate statewide than face the music for the mess he’s made in Tarrant.
Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, and other statewide Republicans who will be on the fall ballot are surely conflicted. They know Bo is a dim bulb, loose cannon, loudmouth who reinforces the Republican brand forming around racism, antisemitism, and attacks on middle-class families. Several of them called for Bo to resign as Tarrant Party Chair months ago. He refused. Now they must deal with him as a statewide MAGA mouthpiece who they will regularly be called on to condemn or embrace.
For Democrats, it’s a win. The nasty stain Bo French leaves on Tarrant Republicans won’t wash out just because he’s left local party office. And statewide Democrats will get the benefit of ordinary Texans seeing the ugliest side of Texas Republican politics in every statement and appearance made by Bo French.
