# Bo French Richard West "Bo" French is a Texas investor and political figure, **chair of the Tarrant County Republican Party from 2023 until his resignation in November 2025**, and the **Republican nominee for Texas Railroad Commissioner** in the 2026 midterms. The Railroad Commission, despite the name, is the state agency that regulates oil and gas. ## 2026 nomination French challenged **incumbent Commissioner Jim Wright** in the Republican primary. Neither cleared 50% on **March 3, 2026** — each took roughly 32% statewide — forcing a runoff. French won the **May 26, 2026 runoff by 50.6% to 49.4%**, one of the narrowest statewide Republican results of the cycle. He faces Democratic state representative **Jon Rosenthal** on **November 3, 2026**. ## The September 2026 backlash French's public posts have repeatedly drawn condemnation from elected Republicans. In the summer of 2025, while still county chair, he posted a social-media poll asking whether Jewish or Muslim people posed a "bigger threat to America"; **Lieutenant Governor [[Dan Patrick]]** was among the Republicans who called on him to resign. In **September 2026** a post attacking South Asian students at the University of Texas at Austin produced a sharper break, with three distinct fronts opening within days: | Date | Who | What | |---|---|---| | Sept 14 | **[[Karl Rove]]** | Told a Headliners Club audience in Austin he would vote for Rosenthal, calling French a "bigot" — breaking roughly three decades in which he had voted for one Democrat (Bob Bullock, 1994) | | Sept 15 | *[[Politico]]* | Reported Texas Republicans' fear that French would drive Hispanic voters further from the ticket | | Sept 16 | **[[Erick Erickson]]** | Named French in "The Midwestern Führerbunker Driving the Right Off the Cliff," alongside [[Charles Haywood]] and [[Nick Fuentes]] | | Sept 16 | **[[John Cornyn]]** | Reposted Rove's *[[Wall Street Journal]]* op-ed "Why I'm Voting for a Texas Democrat," quoting: "The GOP's stables need a cleaning. This is a good place to start." (date per HCR's letter of Sept 18; the posts themselves are on Cornyn's X account) | Rove's op-ed argued that racists, "misogynists who worship hypermasculinity, conspiracy nuts seeking clicks for profit, and religious bigots who won't differentiate between Muslim terrorists and Muslim American patriots…are diminishing the Republican Party," and that he would "have no part of it." French did not withdraw and, per Houston Public Media, doubled down. > [!warning] What nobody asked for > **None of the three — Rove, Cornyn or Erickson — called on French to drop out of the race.** The revolt stopped at disassociation. This is the measurable limit of the September 2026 intra-Republican break. ## September 28, 2026 — the execution posts Twelve days after the UT Austin post, CNN's KFile unit published a review of French's social-media history finding that he had **repeatedly called for the public execution of political opponents** over roughly six years, most recently in **February 2025**. The posts used the hashtag **#HangEmHigh**. Among those named were former president [[Barack Obama]] and, in 2020 posts about "Obama conspirators," the then-chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff. One post read: "It's time we drop the hammer on these treasonous bastards and punish them with the full measure of justice. #HangEmHigh"; a May 2020 post applied the same hashtag to Obama. The posts are no longer live — CNN could not establish whether French deleted them or X removed them for rule violations. An earlier account he used in his 2016 and 2018 statehouse campaigns was suspended. > [!note] Sourcing > This section records **what CNN's KFile documented French publishing**, not an > accusation of unlawful conduct against him. The reporting is carried independently by > *The New Republic*, Mediaite, Raw Story, MS NOW and the *Guardian*. French had issued > no public response as of 2026-09-29. ### The disavowal gap widens The September 14–16 break came from figures with nothing at stake on the Texas ballot — a strategist, a commentator, a senator not up for re-election. The people who could actually cost French the seat have stayed put. As of **September 28, 2026**, neither Governor [[Greg Abbott]], himself running for re-election, nor [[Ken Paxton]], the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, had withdrawn his endorsement, and the state party had not disavowed him. That is the same pattern as the row above, one notch harder: the earlier revolt declined to ask him to leave the race; this one declines to withdraw support after documented calls for a former president to be hanged. ## KB significance French is the test case for whether the Republican coalition's stated boundaries are enforceable at the ballot line. A nominee who won a statewide primary runoff by 1.2 points, then drew on-the-record repudiation from the party's most famous living strategist, a sitting U.S. senator and its most-listened-to talk-radio host — and stayed on the ballot — establishes that in 2026 the party's disciplinary mechanism is **voice, not removal**. See [[Erick Erickson]] and [[Karl Rove]] for the other ends of this thread, and [[TX-Sen-2026]] for the parallel Texas race where the same crossover dynamic is running. ## See Also - [[Karl Rove]] · [[John Cornyn]] · [[Erick Erickson]] · [[Dan Patrick]] - [[TX-Sen-2026]] · [[Greg Abbott]] - [[Charles Haywood]] · [[Nick Fuentes]] · [[Groyper Movement]] - [[Barack Obama]] · [[Ken Paxton]] · [[CNN]] ## Sources — September 28, 2026 - [CNN KFile — Texas GOP candidate Bo French has a history of calling for public executions](https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/28/politics/kfile-bo-french-tweets-executions) - [The New Republic — Texas GOP Candidate Has Long History of Calling for Public Executions](https://newrepublic.com/post/215925/texas-republican-candidate-public-executions) - [Mediaite — Texas Republican Who Went Viral for Racist Post Once Called for Obama to Be Publicly Executed](https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/texas-republican-who-went-viral-for-racist-post-once-called-for-obama-to-be-publicly-executed-cnn/) - [MS NOW — Bo French called for public executions in past social media posts](https://www.ms.now/news/bo-french-texas-gop-candidate-called-for-public-executions-in-past-social-media-posts-report) - [Raw Story — GOP candidate repeatedly demands lynching of Obama](https://www.rawstory.com/bo-french-texas-2677951961/)