Jon Rosenthal defeats Bo French for Texas Railroad Commission seat

Democrats return to the oil and gas regulator after decades

State representative and Democrat Jon Rosenthal was elected Tuesday to the Texas Railroad Commission, defeating two challengers, including Republican nominee Bo French. Rosenthal will serve a six-year term, and his election gives Democrats a seat on the three-member state regulatory body for the first time in decades.

The commission is charged with regulating Texas’s multibillion-dollar oil and gas industry. Despite its name, it has not had railroad oversight since 2005. Rosenthal’s victory breaks a decades-long absence of Democrats from the body.

AP election data showed French easily won several counties in the Permian Basin, described as the heart of Texas’s oil industry. Rosenthal’s largest voting blocs came from Democratic-leaning urban areas.

Rosenthal campaigned on lowering utility rates, ensuring clean water and air, and putting resource guardrails around construction of new datacenters. He cited his 25 years as an oil and gas engineer as a reason he would be fit for the commission.

On the campaign trail, according to the Guardian, 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’s family runs an oil company in west Texas, and he advocated looser industry regulation.

The Guardian reported that the contest’s policy debates were largely eclipsed by French’s rhetoric. In September, the Republican nominee and former GOP chair for Tarrant County, an area encompassing Fort Worth, drew widespread national backlash after posts on X targeted South Asian American students who were at a University of Texas football game. French suggested the students’ 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 2025, when French drew rebuke after asking his X followers whether Jews or Muslims posed a greater threat to America. He later backpedaled, saying in part that there was no place for antisemitism in the GOP and that the party respected the free exercise of religion.

Rosenthal’s victory gave Democrats their first seat on the commission in decades. Rosenthal wrote on X on Tuesday evening: “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 also thanked Republicans who “chose competence versus chaos.”