A social media post by Republican Texas Railroad Commissioner nominee Bo French has triggered a backlash within his party, after he appeared to suggest that a photograph of University of Texas football fans showed the state’s immigration problems were worse than feared.
French posted the image on X on Sunday alongside the message: “The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” The comments were widely interpreted as targeting South Asian students in the crowd, prompting Republican lawmakers and strategists to warn of damage to candidates across Texas.
The controversy comes as Republicans are already concerned about their support among Hispanic and other minority voters. The party faces difficult contests including Ken Paxton’s Senate race, Governor Greg Abbott’s re-election campaign and several key House battles.
A number of Republican politicians, including some fighting competitive races, condemned the post as racist. Others issued more carefully worded responses, while no senior Republican called for French to withdraw from the contest.
“His post on social media is profoundly unhelpful if his goal is to see Republicans win statewide races in a tough political environment in 50 days,” said Matt Mackowiak, an Austin-based Republican consultant.
John Cornyn, the Republican senator whose primary challenge to Mr Paxton was unsuccessful, condemned the post and asked whether other party officials would “condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized.”
Representative Monica De La Cruz, who is defending a seat in a Hispanic-majority district, said she was willing to “condemn racism” wherever it came from.
“All I see in that photograph is a group of kids celebrating a Longhorns win. What can be more Texan than that?” she said, while also criticising her Democratic opponent, Bobby Pulido, over past racial comments.
Karl Rove, a long-standing adviser to former president George W Bush, reportedly called French a “bigot” at a private lunch and said he would vote for French’s Democratic opponent. State Representative Jon Rosenthal, the Democrat running against French, said the post had produced his best fundraising day of the election cycle.
French has repeatedly defended his comments and did not respond to requests for comment. During a local radio appearance on Monday, he said he had no personal animosity towards the students but argued: “It is not racist to point out that we should be favoring Texans over foreigners.”
Texas Republicans divided over Bo French post
Governor Abbott said the post “is not my message”, but added that unity did not prevent Texas from pursuing “the toughest immigration laws of any state in America” or freezing H-1B visas at its universities.
That response drew criticism from Anang Mittal, an Indian American national Republican strategist, who said the photograph showed university students rather than illegal immigrants or H-1B visa holders. He described the governor’s position as effectively saying: “I condemn racism, but also, like, we’re keeping all the Indians out.”
Two students pictured in the photograph told a Dallas newspaper that they were US citizens. Most University of Texas students are Texans, with state law requiring 90 per cent of each freshman class to come from in-state, and there is no evidence that the students shown were foreign nationals.
Mr Paxton said he condemned “racism in all its forms” after being challenged by Democrat James Talarico, but accused Mr Talarico of having a “history of dividing Texans by race”. Representatives for Mr Paxton and Mr Abbott did not respond to requests for comment.
Some Republicans stopped short of directly rebuking French. Representative Troy Nehls said he had not seen the posts but voiced concern about the number of people living in the country and called for the border to be shut for 10 years.
Senator Andy Kim, a Democrat, said the issue had been raised by every Asian American voter he met while campaigning with Mr Talarico in Houston. He said voters felt Republicans were “actively demonizing us, actively being xenophobic and racist towards us”.
Republican consultant Brendan Steinhauser said French risked alienating potential Republican, conservative and independent voters, including the parents of students shown in the picture.
The political consequences could extend beyond the immediate election, particularly among Texas’s growing Indian American population in Dallas and Houston. The group has previously been courted by Republicans, including at a Houston event headlined by Donald Trump and India’s prime minister Narendra Modi that attracted more than 50,000 people in 2019.
French’s comments have also revived scrutiny of his previous statements. Last year, he deleted an online poll asking whether Muslims or Jews were “the bigger threat to America” and said he regretted it, adding that “antisemitism has no place in the Republican Party”.
French defeated a well-funded Republican incumbent this spring to become the party’s nominee for the Railroad Commission, which regulates Texas’s oil, gas and mining industries and has little direct responsibility for immigration or social policy.
His latest controversy has nevertheless exposed divisions within the Texas Republican Party. Glen Whitley, a Republican former Tarrant County judge, said party officials were reluctant to demand French’s withdrawal because doing so could allow a Democrat to win statewide.
