One of the most closely watched midterm races will not determine who will lead an important swing state. It will not decide the balance of power in Congress. But it could be a bellwether for the future of the Republican Party, and set the contours for acceptable discourse in mainstream politics.
It is the race for the Texas Railroad Commission.
The Republican nominee for the statewide regulatory post is Bo French, who has a history of making racist and bigoted comments. Mr. French recently sparked a national firestorm when he referred to University of Texas students at a football game as a “problem” — simply because they appeared to be of South Asian descent.
Suddenly, an election that is about regulating oil and gas and would normally be a cakewalk for Texas Republicans has divided the party. It has also become a test of whether views once considered extreme within the Republican Party are now acceptable to the state’s voters.
“This race has now become a referendum on tribalism,” said Joe Straus, a Republican who served as speaker of the Texas House of Representatives from 2009 to 2019. “The question is: Are people so loyal to the Republican Party, which hasn’t lost a statewide election in decades, that they’ll support a known racist?”
“I hope that the answer is no,” Mr. Straus said.
Mr. French did not respond to requests for comment.
Stephen K. Bannon, a leading architect of the MAGA movement who has railed against immigration, recently hosted Mr. French on his podcast, “War Room,” and urged viewers to rally around the candidate. “The most important race in this country is Bo French as Railroad Commissioner,” Mr. Bannon said earlier this month at the Young Republicans of Texas convention. “Bo French stands for courage.”
After Mr. French’s post, polls now show a tightening race, within the margin of error.
“It’s a must-win,” said Jon Rosenthal, the Democratic opponent. “There’s so much on the line, and it’s not just the economy and energy infrastructure.”
In some ways, Mr. French is the product of state G.O.P. politics. Texas Republicans have been focused on the issue of demographic change. The growth in recent years of the state’s nonwhite population has fueled resentment against both legal and illegal immigrants, who some say have fueled rising housing prices and taken jobs from Americans.
State leaders have responded by effectively banning many Chinese citizens from buying property, limiting the hiring of H-1B workers at state agencies and public universities and opening investigations into Muslim institutions across the state. Officials promote these policies as necessary for national security and the protection of American values and economic livelihoods.
“This is the consequence of one-party dominance,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “The primary electorate becomes the decisive contest, and candidates have to appeal only to a very small sliver of their own electorate.”
The race for Texas Railroad Commission is also not the only midterm contest where bigoted comments have become an issue. In Michigan, Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for Senate, has tacitly supported baseless descriptions of his Muslim opponent, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, as a “terrorist” sleeping in an Osama bin Laden jersey. Brandon Herrera, a Republican nominee for a House seat in Texas, has waved off concerns about past comments he made as a YouTuber in which he referred, for example, to a Nazi-era submachine gun as “the original ghetto blaster” and “Hitler’s street sweeper.”
Mr. French has a history of similar comments. He has said that Islam poses a danger to the United States. (“I won’t rest until every Muslim is gone,” he wrote this summer on social media.) He has called for the deportation of 100 million people, nearly a third of the country’s population. He has repeatedly attacked his political opponents by using slurs for gay people and people with disabilities.
At times, Republicans have criticized his comments. When Mr. French shared a poll on social media last year asking whether Muslims or Jews were a bigger threat to America, some Republican leaders, including Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor and a Trump ally, called on Mr. French to step down as party chairman in Tarrant County, an influential center of conservative activism.
Although Mr. French deleted the poll, he mostly doubled down on his extremist positions and went on to enter the Republican primary for Texas Railroad Commission.
Buoyed by a flood of money from billionaire West Texas oilmen and far-right kingmakers, Mr. French leaned on culture war issues like fighting D.E.I. and sharia law. In a primary runoff, he ousted an incumbent Republican who had been backed by the governor, lieutenant governor and other big names in the oil and gas industry.
After his post on the students at the football game went viral, Mr. French explained that his post was “not about race, it’s about policy,” specifically what he believed to be an admissions policy that favored international students over Americans. By state law, 90 percent of first-year students at the University of Texas at Austin must be in-state residents, and at least several of the students in the image he posted were American citizens.
For some Republicans, Mr. French’s post was a step too far.
Senator John Cornyn and Karl Rove, the political strategist, condemned Mr. French’s post. Others, including Gov. Greg Abbott, and Ken Paxton, the Republican candidate for Senate in Texas and the state’s attorney general, sought to distance themselves while stopping short of calling on Mr. French to drop out. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, in contrast to his previous criticism, remained silent. Last week, President Trump, who has his own history of racist comments, omitted without explanation Mr. French’s name from a comprehensive list of endorsements for Republican candidates in Texas.
A few politicians have expressed measured support for Mr. French’s message.
“How he articulated that? No, I didn’t like that,” Nate Sheets, the Republican candidate for agriculture commissioner, told The Times last month. “Do I agree with the sentiment that the immigration system that we have in America today is creating a negative future for America? I do.”
Mr. Rosenthal, the Democratic opponent, has sought to capitalize on the Republican rift. He has run ads highlighting criticism of Mr. French by other Republican leaders and accepted an endorsement from Mattie Parker, the Republican mayor of Fort Worth, where Mr. French was born.
In the weeks since Mr. French’s post, both candidates have raised around $900,000 each — large amounts for a relatively obscure post. Much of Mr. French’s money came from big donors, while Mr. Rosenthal saw many small contributions from across the country.
Defeating Mr. French remains an uphill battle. Mr. French still has a fund-raising advantage over Mr. Rosenthal. Indian Americans, and Asian Americans more broadly, are a small percentage of the state’s voting population. And even as Republicans weather voter concerns over high prices and an unpopular war, Texas is still seen as hostile territory for Democrats running statewide.
“The odds are against us,” Mr. Rosenthal acknowledged.
Gene Wu, the top Democratic leader in the Texas House, warned about wider repercussions from a French victory.
He said, “It would signal to other officials, ‘Hey, you cannot only believe this stuff and vote for it, but you can talk about it publicly and get support and still win.’”
Lauren McGaughy contributed reporting.
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