Democrat Rosenthal wins ugly race for Texas railroad commissioner

Democrat Jon Rosenthal won the Texas Railroad Commissioner race, CBS News projects, defeating Republican Bo French after the GOP candidate refused to reconsider his racist, anti-Muslim and antisemitic comments.

With about 93% of votes counted, Rosenthal led French 52.5% to 45.6%.

The powerful Texas railroad commissioner does not deal with railroads, but instead regulates the state's oil and gas industry, which accounts for over 40% of the U.S. crude oil output. There are three total commissioners — the other two are Republicans.

Rosenthal is currently a state representative from Houston and a former oil field engineer, who worked in the industry for 25 years. French originally hails from Midland and had been the Tarrant County Republican chairman. 

Although Rosenthal and French have differences on oil and gas policy, the main issues in the race had come down to French's controversial comments about immigrants, Muslims and Jews in what was already shaping up to be a difficult year for Texas Republicans. 

Ahead of the May runoff, many of Texas' prominent elected Republicans united against French's candidacy, although he ultimately won the nomination. In September, French made national headlines when he posted that University of Texas students were a "problem" because the students appeared to be of South Asian descent. In another post with the same photo, French said, "Like body-cams exposed criminals, social media is exposing how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners." Several of the students came forward later and said they were American citizens. 

Shortly after his post, Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who earlier lost his primary against Ken Paxton, said he would not be voting for French. Other Texas Republicans, including Karl Rove, said they would not be voting for French. 

French still raised more than $700,000 after the social media post about the UT students. Rosenthal had brought in more than $500,000 in the same time period. 

Even ahead of his primary win, French had previously posted antisemitic and anti-Muslim comments and had said in his campaign platform that he wanted to root out DEI policies, "stop the Islamic invasion of Texas" and "support life and the nuclear family."

The last time a Democrat won a race for railroad commissioner was 1990.