Bo French was just one among the many losers in Tuesday’s statewide Democratic sweep in Texas. French, who was running for a seat on the powerful Texas Railroad Commission (which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry), had attracted public outrage for an X post of a photo of Indian students at a University of Texas at Austin football game. “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” French wrote. “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”
It’s unclear whether French’s remarks were what cost him his election. Governor Greg Abbott lost by roughly the same margin, and Senate nominee Ken Paxton by nearly twice as much. But all three performed worse than other statewide Republicans. And French measurably underperformed in South Asian areas, specifically.
For some, though, the obvious cause of Republicans’ comprehensive defeat was the demographic change that had alarmed French in the first place. “Demographics is destiny,” wrote commentator Benny Johnson, noting that Texas is 50 percentage points less white than it was in 1970. Gregory Bovino, the former Border Patrol commander who led the crackdown in Minneapolis, blamed Abbott’s loss on votes from H-1B nonimmigrants from India, of whom “70 to 80 percent vote Democrat.” Other pundits piled on with the same message: Democrats won, in Texas and elsewhere, because non-white immigrants voted for them overwhelmingly.
The trouble with this argument is not just that it is wrong on the facts, although it is. Nor is the problem that these influencers are speaking some forbidden truth. The trouble, rather, is that their theory absolves Republicans of responsibility for their historic loss. When you blame an election on the inexorable march of demographic change, you erase the poor policy choices that caused the electorate to swing wildly against the GOP in just two years.
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