Democrat Wins Texas Oil Regulator Seat

SUBSCRIBE SEARCH ARTICLES NEWS Democrat Jon Rosenthal defeated Republican firebrand Bo French. Image by RoschetzkyIstockPhoto via iStock

Democrat Jon Rosenthal defeated Republican firebrand Bo French to become the first member of his party in 36 years to win a seat on the powerful panel that oversees the $200 billion Texas oil industry.

Rosenthal, a state representative and self-described “drill-baby-drill Democrat,” defeated French by a margin of 52.6% to 45.5%, according to the Associated Press. The AP called the race for Rosenthal with 94% of the votes counted.

The three-member Texas Railroad Commission regulates an industry that pumps more crude than every OPEC member except Saudi Arabia. Its purview expanded from overseeing freight rates more than 100 years ago to handling drilling permits, well inspections and enforcing safety and pollution rules. The agency provided the template for OPEC’s founders in 1960. 

During the campaign, Rosenthal vowed to push for tougher oversight of the oil and gas industry, including imposing stricter methane flaring rules and requiring companies to plug abandoned wells faster. He also pledged to reduce the industry’s influence over the Railroad Commission. Rosenthal’s ability to impose changes will be limited, however, since Republicans will still hold two of the three seats on the commission.

Nonetheless, Rosenthal earned a reputation as a consensus-builder during his time in the state legislature, said Renee Cross, a professor at the University of Houston. He’s also no stranger to the energy industry, having worked as a mechanical engineer for some of the world’s biggest oil field contractors, including SLB and NOV Inc. 

“Rosenthal could work well with the other two railroad commissioners who are Republicans,” Cross, senior executive director for Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, said in a recent interview. “I just can’t see Rosenthal with his background coming in and just becoming this wild-eyed liberal trying to impose things that just aren’t consistent with Texas’s way of doing things.” 

This year’s race for the typically obscure regulatory agency garnered national attention after French’s racist social media post, which drew widespread condemnation, including from some fellow Republicans. 

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The post from September depicted University of Texas football fans celebrating a comeback win against Ohio State. French said the image showed “how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners.” 

“It’s everywhere and far worse than any of us could imagine,” French wrote. 

Rosenthal had closed the gap with French in the final weeks of the campaign, with a University of Houston poll showing the race in a statistical dead heat. He became “the receptacle for anti-Bo French votes,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. 

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