Rove says he’ll vote against Bo French in Texas race

Republican strategist Karl Rove said he is backing a Democrat in a Texas state race after recent controversy surrounding the Republican candidate.

“This November, I’ll vote for only the second Democrat in my life. The first was Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock in 1994, because I thought he would work with Republicans,” Rove wrote in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal published Tuesday.

“The second will be Mr. French’s opponent, Jon Rosenthal. The GOP’s stables need a cleaning. This is a good place to start,” he added.

Over the weekend , Texas Republicans condemned the Republican candidate making a bid to be the state’s railroad commissioner, Bo French, due to a post about University of Texas at Austin students of South Asian descent.

French’s post featured South Asian students at a Texas football game, with the candidate suggesting people of South Asian heritage were taking over the school’s population.

The Republican originally shared a screenshot of a post on the social platform X that showed the students alongside a caption reading “Bollywood University.” French later showed a similar image with a caption reading: “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 GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches—and not only in Texas. Conservatism and the party it dominates have an increasing number of bigoted advocates of a ‘heritage America,’ composed of white descendants of the original European settlers,” Rove wrote in his Journal piece.

The Hill has reached out to French’s campaign for comment.