When early voting opens Monday, every Texas ballot will carry a statewide race many voters skip past: a seat on the Railroad Commission, the three-member board that, despite its name, regulates the oil and gas industry.
The commission votes on drilling permits, issues penalties for violations, approves pipeline construction and oversees the disposal of industry wastewater, with a budget of roughly half a billion dollars, The Texas Tribune reported Friday. The winner on Nov. 3 joins it.
The candidates
Jon Rosenthal, a Democrat, is a 63-year-old oil field engineer and four-term state representative from Houston who calls himself the "Drill, Baby, Drill" Democrat. A win would make him the first Democrat elected to the commission since the 1990s, according to the Tribune. His platform includes:
- going after companies that repeatedly exceed air pollution limits;
- charging a fee on companies that inject oil and gas wastewater underground and using the money to plug orphan wells;
- requiring natural gas plants to prepare for extreme weather and publish the results, and examining whether recovery costs after severe weather are passed on to consumers.
Bo French, a Republican, is 56, from Midland, and his family owns French Oil. He previously led the Tarrant County Republican Party. He is running on lower electricity and gas prices, fewer regulations, an end to diversity programs, limits on foreign ownership of oil and gas wells and anti-abortion policies, and he has said the commission should stay out of the industry's way so it can produce more oil. "Texas has oil and leaders who say yes to producing it," French wrote in a post on X. "Keep radicals off the Texas Railroad Commission." French did not respond to the Tribune's requests for comment.
Posts, money and polls
French's social media posts have become part of the race. The Tribune reported that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked him to step down from party leadership after he posted a poll asking followers whether Jews or Muslims posed a bigger threat to the country, and that in September he commented on the racial makeup of the University of Texas at Austin's student body.
