Bo French, the Republican candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner, drew criticism after a Sunday post targeting students of South Asian descent at a University of Texas football game. The dispute put Bordeaux–france French Open in the middle of a public clash inside the Republican Party as the November election approaches.
Bo French Sunday posts
French posted a series of xenophobic comments after the Texas Longhorns upset Ohio State. In one post, he shared a photo of students of South Asian descent cheering in burnt orange gear from the stands and wrote, “how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners.”
He followed that with, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” and then, “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” Those posts made the target of the criticism explicit: students at the University of Texas who were visible at the game.
John Cornyn response
John Cornyn called out French in a post that said, “This is the Republican nominee for statewide office.” Cornyn also asked, “Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized,” before adding, “This is how great political parties self-destruct. Sad.”
Jon Rosenthal, the Houston Democrat running against French, thanked Cornyn for speaking out. That reaction pushed the story beyond one candidate’s post and into a public test of how far other Republicans would go in distancing themselves from their own nominee.
Dustin Burrows and Dade Phelan
Dustin Burrows said, “You can oppose immigration policy without demeaning people because of their race or ethnicity — this post has crossed the line.” Dade Phelan called French “unfit for office.”
The split matters because French is still the Republican nominee while Republican elected officials including Cornyn, Burrows and Phelan publicly rejected the post. The contrast leaves French facing criticism from within his own party rather than only from opponents, and it does so in the final stretch before the November election.
Whether French will answer the backlash with a deletion, a statement or a new post was not addressed in the material at hand. For now, the sharper question is whether the criticism from Cornyn and other Republicans becomes a one-day rebuke or a lasting campaign problem for French.
