Colleagues condemn Tarrant County GOP leader for repeated use of expletives

Editor’s note: This story contains explicit language.

Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman Bo French is under fire this week for a series of recent social media posts in which he repeatedly called his political opponents gay and disabled slurs.

“This is the gayest ad ever,” French, 55, wrote in an Oct. 11 response to a Democratic ad on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Guarantee every single one of these ‘boys’ is a homo.” There is literally nothing manly about any of them.”

“Delay power,” he he wrote Tuesday under a video from the Major League Baseball World Series. “Don’t ever go completely retarded,” he said in response to former Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney on Oct. 4.

In another post, French polled her 14,000 followers about the upcoming election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. “If you think Harris’ policies are better for Americans than Trump’s policies, you are,” he asked before listing four options. “Ignorant”, “A liar”, “Retarded” or “Homosexual”.

The posts drew public condemnation from a small number of Republican officials in Tarrant County and elsewhere in the state, some of whom said French’s behavior was part of a broader normalization of hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric within the party.

Tarrant County is the largest in the nation populous county run by Republicansbut it has consistently tilted toward blue in recent election cycles. The reaction to French’s comments comes days before Republicans in the rapidly diversifying county hope to maintain control over strong seats in local government and ahead of statewide races where Tarrant’s 1.3 million registered voters will likely weigh heavily.

As party chairman, French has been open about his goal of “making Tarrant County inhospitable to Democrats,” and in August he was unsuccessful. tried to pressure local Republican officials to close polling places on college campuses for this year’s elections — a move the party explicitly said it was meant to disadvantage Democrats.

French has been a fixture of one for years vast political empire financed by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, two West Texas oil tycoons who spent tens of millions of dollars cleaning up the Texas GOP of the more moderate members while simultaneous hiring white nationalists and associating with acquaintances ANTISEMITIC. Groups funded by billionaires gave French about $375,000 for his unsuccessful Texas House campaigns in 2016 and 2018, and he was backed by their network in his successful bid last year to lead the local party.

Since then, French has continued to pull the Tarrant County GOP further to the right. In September, the party hosted Jack Posobiec, a prominent far-right activist who he praised Chilean autocrat Augusto Pinochet and Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco both oversaw the killing, torture or imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of their political opponents.

And in July, French joined other Republican leaders on stage at a conference of Fort Worth, who urged attendees to resist a Democratic campaign for “rid the earth of the white race” and embrace Christian nationalism. The event was organized by the True Texas Project, a prominent group in Dunn and Wilks’ network whose leaders they sympathized with racist reasons of the gunman who killed 23 Hispanics at an El Paso WalMart in 2019. The conference included several speakers who frequently collaborated with white nationalists or eugenicists, prompting far-right Republicans such as former US Rep. Louie Gohmert and former state Sen. Don Huffines to condemn or withdraw of the event.

Other Dunn and Wilks allies were similarly disdainful of the disabled. In 2020, two of the billionaires’ oldest agents accidentally published an unedited audio podcast in the whom they mocked Governor Greg Abbott’s use of a wheelchair. The two were reprimanded amid bipartisan outrage and have since found new jobs — as vice chairman and general counsel for the Tarrant County GOP.

Neither the French nor the leaders of other parties responded to requests for interviews or a list of questions. But the Frenchman continued to play down his comments this week, instead mocking critics as “fragile snowflakes” while quietly brushing off some, but not allof positions. On Wednesday, X’s account was briefly suspended. In the 20 hours after he was unblocked, French posted at least 70 more times — often mocking those who challenged his posts.

“Uh oh, you said the R word,” he mocked a user who had just used the slur. “Totally,” he wrote to another user who called French’s critics “gay and retarded.”

French is no stranger to controversy online — earlier this year he was criticized by some Republicans for writing on social media that “there are just some things you can’t trust women with” in response to an ad Harris’ campaign that asked voters to “trust women” with decisions about their health care and their futures.

But his behavior this week has been a tipping point for some fellow Republicans. In social media posts, Marion and Keller County Republican leaders condemned French, as did a recent member of the Texas GOP executive committee and a handful of elected officials from other Texas counties.

Some Tarrant County Republicans were just as furious, linking their behavior to what they said was a rising tide of misogyny and hatred within the local GOP.

“I can’t stand the ‘wife in the kitchen’ mentality, the slurs and the baffling hatred of gays,” Stacy Reddy, former Tarrant County GOP precinct chairwoman, wrote on Facebook, adding that she took down her post because of her French. “Women own their bodies and minds, disabilities are not insults, and love is love, as long as (both are) consenting adults.”

On Wednesday, Tarrant County Precinct Chairwoman Sheena Rodriguez sent an email to other party leaders asking French to apologize for her “downright vile and dehumanizing” comments and resign immediately after the election from next week.

“Mr. French’s counterproductive and downright destructive rhetoric is damaging to the Tarrant County GOP,” Rodriguez wrote. “The conservative members, supporters and constituents of the Tarrant County GOP deserve a new, humble, respectful and productive leader — one who is capable of being a decent human being.”

Rodriguez declined an interview request, but said in her letter that numerous other county precinct chairs were “disturbed” by French’s behavior.

Some party members responded to Rodriguez by accusing her of causing division ahead of the election. “It is not appropriate to create fights within the party a week before election day,” Carlos Turcios, a section president who writes for a local right-wing website, said on social media.

Others said they were also outraged – by critics of the French. In an email to Rodriguez, Larry Carpenter Jr., another Tarrant County chapter president, claimed she sought to “censor free speech” and accused her of being a “sellout to the current conservative movement ”, which is more aligned with George Bush. Dick Cheney was GOP.

“I would highly recommend you switch parties,” wrote Carpenter, who did not respond to a request for comment. “All this evidence you sent me is gay, retarded, ignorant and wasting everyone’s time (sic) because it really is a joke.”