The office that regulates a $593 million oil and gas industry, contested by a candidate who barely talks about oil and gas.
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A NOTE ON THE NAME, SINCE IT CONFUSES EVERYONE
Despite the name, the Texas Railroad Commission hasn’t primarily regulated railroads in decades — it’s the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency, overseeing the industry’s booming production and a growing crisis of oilfield wastewater disposal, with a $593 million budget, the largest in the commission’s history.
THE RACE
This is a genuine upset story on the Republican side. Incumbent Commissioner Jim Wright — who campaigned as a “proven advocate for Texas energy” emphasizing environmental and safety standards — lost his own primary runoff to challenger Bo French, a former Tarrant County GOP chairman, by the narrowest of margins: 663,679 to 648,978, roughly half a percentage point. Governor Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and House Speaker Dustin Burrows all backed Wright. He lost anyway. Democratic state Rep. Jon Rosenthal won his primary and now faces French in November — the first real chance in decades for a Democrat to hold a Railroad Commission seat, according to SMU political scientist Cal Jillson, who’s grouped French alongside Ken Paxton as one of two Republican statewide nominees this cycle whose personal conduct could actually cost the party a seat that should be safe.
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BO FRENCH (R) — THE CANDIDATE WHO BARELY DISCUSSES THE JOB HE’S RUNNING FOR
French built his campaign almost entirely around culture-war issues rather than the regulatory function of the office he’s seeking: fighting DEI, opposing what he calls “Sharia Law,” and — most alarmingly — calling for the deportation of 100 million people, a figure that would include legal visa holders and U.S. citizens alongside undocumented immigrants. He’s drawn open accusations of Islamophobia from reporters covering the race, and even fellow Republicans have flagged his social media conduct as a liability. His attacks on Rosenthal have focused on a years-old photo of Rosenthal wearing a “Protect Trans Kids” face mask on the House floor, rather than any substantive critique of Rosenthal’s actual energy or regulatory positions.
On the substance of the job itself, French’s stated position is that the commission awards too many contracts “based on DEI criteria rather than merit” — a claim about an agency whose core function is permitting oil and gas wells and managing wastewater disposal, not workforce diversity policy. It’s worth noting plainly: French’s own campaign material described him as a “MAGA conservative” who wants “to give Trump the backing he needs” in the energy industry — a framing that treats a technical regulatory seat as a loyalty post rather than an engineering and safety role.
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JON ROSENTHAL (D) — THE ENGINEER RUNNING ON THE JOB DESCRIPTION
Rosenthal, a Houston-area state representative, is explicitly betting his campaign on competence over rhetoric — describing the race himself as “experience versus rhetoric.” He’s an engineer by background and has said he’s “keenly focused on energy infrastructure in this state,” a direct contrast with French’s culture-war framing. That’s a deliberate strategic choice: rather than matching French’s attacks, Rosenthal is trying to make the case that a technical regulatory agency overseeing wastewater disposal, well safety, and the state’s largest industry deserves a commissioner who talks about wastewater disposal, well safety, and industry regulation.
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THE MONEY BEHIND IT
This is not a sleepy down-ballot race financially. Since late February, combined contributions between Wright and French during the primary runoff alone topped $3.4 million — genuinely large for a commission race — with billionaires, major oil companies, and trade groups running what the Texas Tribune described as a proxy battle among competing factions of Texas conservative megadonors and national figures, all fighting over an office most voters have never heard of.
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WHY THIS RACE MATTERS TO PROJECT ZERO
This is exactly the kind of race Project Zero exists to cover: a technical regulatory office with real authority over environmental and safety standards for one of the largest oil and gas industries in the world, where the Republican nominee’s public campaign has almost nothing to do with the job and everything to do with culture-war signaling — while a Democrat with actual engineering credentials is running specifically on substance. If Republicans lose this seat, it won’t be because Texas turned blue. It’ll be because their own nominee decided the job was a soapbox rather than a regulatory post, and Texas Republican leadership tried and failed to stop him in the primary.
STATUS: Competitive by Texas Railroad Commission standards — a genuinely contested seat for the first time in decades, per multiple political observers. General: November 3.
PROJECT ZERO: THE POLL BO FRENCH WON’T LIVE DOWN
Before he was the Republican nominee for a seat regulating Texas oil and gas, Bo French asked his followers to pick which religious minority group posed a “bigger threat to America.” His own party’s leadership told him to resign.
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WHAT HAPPENED
In June 2025, while chairing the Tarrant County Republican Party, French posted a poll to his 28,000 followers on X asking a simple, stark question: “Who is a bigger threat to America?” — with the two options being “Jews” and “Muslims.” The poll ran for days, racking up nearly 900 votes and more than 16,000 views before French deleted it.
There is no version of that framing that isn’t what it looks like: a sitting county GOP chairman inviting his followers to rank two American religious minority groups by how dangerous he believes them to be, during a period when both Jewish and Muslim communities were already reporting sharply rising incidents of bias and harassment nationally.
HIS OWN PARTY TOLD HIM TO GO
This wasn’t a fringe backlash from political opponents — it was an open revolt from inside his own party’s Texas leadership. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick posted directly: “Bo French’s words do not reflect my values nor the values of the Republican Party. Antisemitism and religious bigotry have no place in Texas.” Local party leaders went further — one Tarrant County figure wrote “there is no place in our movement for hateful rhetoric, including anti-Semitism,” while another called for “new leadership” outright, saying to “clear the deck.” State Senators Phil King and Tan Parker, along with Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, all publicly urged him to step down.
CAIR-Texas called the poll “not only offensive — it’s dangerous,” warning it “fuels suspicion and division during a time when both Jewish and Muslim communities are facing heightened threats across the country.” One widely shared response from a self-identified Texas Jewish conservative activist put it memorably: he’d known “so many faithful walkers on the path of Jesus who would be nauseated by this bigotry.”
HIS “EXPLANATION” MADE IT WORSE, NOT BETTER
French’s first defense was that the poll was actually about Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic primary win in the New York City mayoral race — a framing that doesn’t remotely match what the poll literally asked, which named two entire religious groups, not one candidate. His follow-up statement doubled down rather than walked it back: “there is no greater threat than Islamic radicals,” he said, before pivoting to blame Joe Biden for admitting “20 million illegal aliens” and asking rhetorically how many were “jihadists.” He closed by telling people who called the poll antisemitic to “wake up and look at the real threat” — managing, in a single statement meant to address an antisemitism controversy, to pivot into open Islamophobia instead.
WHY THIS MATTERS FOR THE RACE HE’S IN NOW
This is the same Bo French who went on to narrowly beat a sitting Railroad Commissioner in a Republican primary runoff this year — a race Texas GOP leadership actively worked against him in, with Governor Abbott, Dan Patrick, and Speaker Burrows all backing his opponent. He won anyway. He’s now the Republican nominee for a seat regulating a $593 billion-scale industry, running a general-election campaign built almost entirely on culture-war material rather than the job’s actual regulatory function — DEI, “Sharia Law,” and mass deportation rhetoric, according to Texas Tribune’s own coverage of the race.
Political scientist Cal Jillson has already flagged French, alongside Ken Paxton, as one of two Republican statewide nominees this cycle whose personal conduct alone could hand Democrats a seat they haven’t won in decades. The poll isn’t ancient history or a youthful indiscretion — it’s from barely a year ago, it drew condemnation from his own party’s top leadership, and it’s part of a consistent pattern, not an isolated lapse.
STATUS: Texas Railroad Commission general election, November 3. Democrat Jon Rosenthal is the nominee running against French.