Colleagues condemn Tarrant County GOP leader for repeated use of slurs

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Editor’s note: This story contains explicit language.

Tarrant County Republican Party Chair Bo French is under fire this week for a series of recent social media posts in which he repeatedly called his political opponents the R-word, “homos” and other insults.

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

“Retard strength,” he wrote Tuesday under a video from the Major League Baseball World Series.

In another post, French polled his 14,000 followers about the upcoming presidential election. “If you believe (Vice President Kamala Harris’) policies are better for Americans than (former President Donald Trumps’) policies, you are:” he asked before listing four choices. “Ignorant,” “A liar,” “Retarded,” or “Gay.”

The posts have prompted public condemnations from a handful of Republican officials in Tarrant County and other parts of the state, some of whom have said they are part of a broader normalization of hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric in the party.

Tarrant County is the nation’s most populous Republican-led county, but has steadily tilted blue in recent election cycles. Backlash to French’s comments comes as Republicans in the fast-diversifying county seek to maintain control over powerful seats in local government, and ahead of statewide races in which Tarrant’s 1.3 million registered voters will likely weigh heavily.

As party chair, French has been open about his goal is to “make Tarrant County inhospitable for Democrats,” and in August he unsuccessfully tried to pressure local Republican officials to close polling sites on college campuses for this year’s election — a move that the party explicitly said was aimed at disadvantage Democrats.

French has for years been a fixture in a sprawling political empire funded by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, two West Texas oil tycoons who have spent tens of millions of dollars cleansing the Texas GOP of more moderate members while simultaneously employing white nationalists and associating with well-known antisemites. Groups funded by the billionaires gave French roughly $375,000 for his unsuccessful Texas House bids in 2016 and 2018, and he was backed by their network in his successful bid last year to lead the local GOP.

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 has praised Chilean autocrat Augusto Pinochet and Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco — whose regimes murdered, tortured or imprisoned hundreds of thousands of their political opponents.

And in July, French joined other Republican leaders onstage at a conference in Fort Worth that urged attendees to resist a Democratic campaign to “rid the earth of the white race” and embrace Christian nationalism. The event was held by True Texas Project, a prominent group in Dunn and Wilks’ network whose leaders have sympathized with the racist motives of the gunman who murdered 23 Hispanic people at an El Paso WalMart in 2019. The conference included several speakers who have frequently collaborated with white nationalists or eugenicists, prompting some right-wing Republicans to condemn or pull out of the event.

Neither French nor other party leaders responded to interview requests or a list of questions. He has since deleted some of the posts despite defending them and mocking “fragile snowflakes” who critiqued him. His X account was briefly limited on Wednesday. In the 20 hours after it was unlocked, he posted at least 70 more times — often sarcastically deriding those who took issue with his posts.

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

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

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

Some Tarrant County Republicans were similarly irate, and said his behavior was part of a broader pattern that has normalized hateful rhetoric within the local GOP.

“I cannot stomach the ‘wife in the kitchen’ mindset, the name-calling and the puzzling hate towards gay people,” Stacy Reddy, a former Tarrant County GOP precinct chair, wrote on Facebook, adding that she stepped down from her post because of French. “Women own their bodies and minds, disabilities are not slur words, and love is love, as long are [sic] both consenting adults.”

On Wednesday, Tarrant County Precinct Chair Sheena Rodriguez also sent an email to other party leaders in which she demanded that French apologize for his “outright vile and dehumanizing” comments and resign immediately after next week’s elections.

“Mr. French’s counterproductive and outright destructive rhetoric is detrimental to the Tarrant County GOP,” Rodriguez wrote. ”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 in her letter said that numerous other county precinct chairs were “disturbed” by French’s behavior.

French is just the latest right-wing Texas Republican to be criticized for their comments about people with disabilities. In 2020, two longtime leaders of Dunn and Wilks’ political network accidentally published unedited podcast audio in which they mocked Gov. Greg Abbott’s use of a wheelchair. The two resigned amid bipartisan outrage, but have since found new jobs — as vice chair and general counsel for the Tarrant County GOP.