Jon Rosenthal has won a seat on the Texas railroad commission, a powerful state regulatory agency, beating out two challengers including the controversial Republican nominee Bo French whose campaign ignited a firestorm over his bigoted remarks.
Rosenthal, a Democrat, will join the three-member body that Democrats have been shut out of for decades. The state agency is charged with regulating Texas’s multibillion oil and gas industry, and has not had railroad oversight since ۲۰۰۵.
The contest’s policy debates were largely eclipsed by French’s inflammatory rhetoric.
French drew widespread national furor in September after targeting south Asian American students who were at a University of Texas football game.
In posts on X, the former GOP chair for Tarrant county, an area encompassing Fort Worth, suggested their presence was evidence that foreigners were displacing Americans. Several prominent Texas Republicans, including Senator John Cornyn, denounced French.
That controversy was preceded by another in June ۲۰۲۵, when French drew rebuke after asking his X followers about whether Jews or Muslims posed a greater threat to America. He later backpedaled, in part, saying there was no place for antisemitism in the GOP and that the party respected the free exercise of religion.
On the campaign trail, French embraced rightwing culture war talking points, saying he would eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) measures and curb the influence of “radical Islam” and the Chinese Communist party in the state’s oil industry. French, whose family runs an oil company in west Texas, also advocated for looser industry regulation.
Meanwhile, Rosenthal ran on lowering utility rates, ensuring clean water and air, and putting resource guardrails around the construction of new datacenters. He cited his ۲۵ years as an oil and gas engineer as a reason why he would be fit for the seat.
French easily won several counties in the Permian Basin, the heart of Texas’s oil industry, according to the AP’s election data. Rosenthal’s largest voting blocs drew from Democratic-leaning urban areas.
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“I am humbled and honored by the faith placed in me by the people of Texas, who have sent the message that the politics of hate and division do not win in the Lone Star State,” Rosenthal wrote on X on Tuesday evening. He also expressed gratitude to Republican who “chose competence versus chaos”.
Rosenthal will serve a six-year term on the commission.
