Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on Thursday became the latest Republican to announce that he won’t be voting for Texas railroad commissioner candidate Bo French due to his recent racist post.
“He’s an embarrassment to the Republican Party, and he’s going to drag the whole ticket down because of his racist comments,” the outgoing U.S. senator told Washington Examiner reporter Ramsey Touchberry.
French’s social media attack on South Asian American students at the University of Texas at Austin has generated bipartisan backlash.
“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,” French wrote in a Sunday post on X that was accompanied by a photo of nonwhite students celebrating at a football game.
French later doubled down on those comments, writing in another post with the same image: “Like body-cams exposed criminals, social media is exposing how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners.”
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Cornyn, who’s been more outspoken in criticizing both President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans since he lost his Senate primary in Texas, joins other GOP figures like Karl Rove and former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan in denouncing French.
As JS’s Ryan Grenoble reported, however, other Texas Republicans have issued more tepid critiques, and few have called on him to drop out of the race.
Since this weekend, French has not apologized for the post and has even sought to fundraise from it.
Cornyn warned his party against normalizing racist and xenophobic statements.
“This is the Republican nominee for statewide office,” Cornyn wrote on X shortly after French’s original post. “Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized. This is how great political parties self-destruct. Sad.”
French’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Cornyn’s statement.