John Cornyn said Thursday that he will not vote for Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas railroad commissioner, after French posted a racist message on X about Asian students at the University of Texas. Cornyn said French is an embarrassment to the Republican Party and warned that he is going to drag the whole ticket down.
The senator did not go as far as endorsing French’s Democratic opponent, Jon Rosenthal. Instead, he said he may just leave his ballot blank, putting a Republican senator in the unusual position of publicly rejecting his party’s nominee while refusing to say whether he will cross over.
Cornyn’s comments landed because they were not a one-off reaction. He posted about the matter daily and reposted a op-ed by Karl Rove titled Why I’m Voting for a Texas Democrat, turning the dispute into a public rebuke that kept widening on X. French’s Sunday post said, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”
The backlash did not come only from Democrats. Some Republicans, including Ted Cruz and Dustin Burrows, also condemned French, underscoring how far his remarks had gone beyond the usual intraparty skirmish. French’s social media history had already drawn criticism as Tarrant County GOP chair, including repeated use of slurs and a post asking whether Jews or Muslims were a bigger threat to America. In March, he also called for the deportation of 100 million people at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
French posted a follow-up on Tuesday, but the basic divide has not changed: Cornyn has made plain that he will not back him, and he has left open only one detail that still matters politically. Whether he skips the race entirely or marks the line for Rosenthal, the senator has already done the louder thing by breaking with his own party in public.
