‘oil Field Trash’ Tries To Pull Off Texas Shocker

AUSTIN, Texas — Any other year, Jon Rosenthal would be a major underdog for statewide office in Texas.

He’s a Democrat running to oversee the oil and gas industry, in a state that has been largely under Republican control for more than 30 years.

But if his closing rural push against a controversial GOP opponent delivers, Rosenthal would have a platform — as one of three state Railroad Commission members — to pursue what he calls commonsense solutions to some of the oil industry’s thorny problems. He has pushed for bigger budgets at the commission so it can retain employees, address unplugged wells and manage oil field wastewater.

All of that, Rosenthal said, can be done without endangering the state’s crude production — an important caveat for an oil field engineer who describes himself as a “drill, baby, drill Democrat.”

“I am thoroughly oil field trash,” Rosenthal said at a recent conference. “I worked on drilling rigs, and I drink, smoke and swear.”

A win would be a watershed moment for Texas, where major GOP candidates often don’t have to break a sweat to win in November. That’s not the case this year as President Donald Trump’s popularity plummets and concerns about affordability hang over candidates.

Then, of course, there’s Rosenthal’s opponent: Bo French.

French made national news in September with a xenophobic online post showing South Asian students celebrating at a University of Texas football game — saying the “problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

Within a week, Rosenthal had raised more money than he had in his whole race, according to campaign finance reports. Longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove also endorsed him in the Wall Street Journal, saying he won’t support extremists.

“For the last several months, I have been saying this campaign is the wildest thing I've ever done,” Rosenthal told POLITICO recently. “It just keeps getting wilder — and still I was not prepared for Karl Rove to say my name.”

Rosenthal is working to peel off Republican and independent voters outside Texas’ major cities, and he expects to benefit from Democrats at the top of the ticket — including Senate candidate James Talarico and gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa.

To be sure, winning won’t be easy for Rosenthal, though he was within 1 percentage point of French, according to a recent poll. French touts the support of major Texas Republicans, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

French has tried to center much of his campaign on social issues and posted an image online of Rosenthal wearing a mask with the slogan, “Protect Trans Kids.”

Rosenthal said he only wore the mask once, during a legislative debate, and said the picture has no bearing on the campaign.

French and the Republican Party of Texas didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.

Rig experience

Rosenthal didn’t set out to be a politician.

He was born in California and moved to Texas with his family when his father became a mathematics professor at the University of Texas in 1979. Rosenthal himself graduated from the school with an engineering degree in 1991.

He went to work with an oil rig manufacturer, designing hydraulic safety equipment and helping set up and take down rigs.

“I was literally the skinny young man that would climb up into the top of the derrick,” he said in April. He still has a scar on his wrist from those early days, when he was doused with hot hydraulic oil.

Rosenthal won a seat in the Texas House representing a Houston-area district in 2018, during Trump’s first term. He was a natural fit on the state House Energy Resources Committee, which has oversight over the state’s oil and gas industry — and over the Railroad Commission.

Texas’ devastating power outages during Winter Storm Uri in 2021 were a turning point for Rosenthal. More than 240 people died in Texas during the storm and many others were injured.

Experts at the time blamed the outages on breakdowns across the power sector, including its ties to the state’s natural gas system — much of which wasn’t protected against below-freezing temperatures. To Rosenthal, it was a massive failure that could be solved by overhauling the state’s power grid and the Railroad Commission’s approach to gas regulations.

Rosenthal said he didn’t run for the Railroad Commission in 2024 because he wanted to work on grid legislation and because two other Democrats were running that year. He jumped into this year’s race because he views it as similar to the 2018 election, when Democrats picked up seats around the country during Trump’s first term.

On the Republican side, incumbent Commissioner Jim Wright drew four challengers for the 2026 race.

One was French, a former head of the local Republican Party in Tarrant County — where he attracted heat for a string of social media posts disparaging Muslims and Jews.

The Railroad Commission has nothing to do with regulating railroads or immigration policy. It focuses on the nitty-gritty tasks of approving oil and gas projects and enforcing state regulations.

French told POLITICO in March that he saw an opening in the primary because none of the candidates had high name recognition.

Much of the oil industry lined up behind Wright, who has spent his six-year term working on wastewater disposal and other issues. But French forced Wright into a runoff and beat him in May.

‘Changes the dynamics’

Rosenthal has spent recent months working in what he calls the four corners of Texas — rural and semirural areas where the oil and gas industry is a big part of life.

He is gambling that voters in outlying areas care enough about the nuts and bolts of the Railroad Commission’s job to at least listen to him.

“I think my job, not only for my campaign, but to help Democrat campaigns overall, is to spend more time and energy in these rural and rural-adjacent areas, particularly places where the energy industry and the agriculture and livestock industries are strong,” Rosenthal said in September.

He appeared four times on KRFE, a conservative radio station in Lubbock, which sits at the northern edge of the Permian Basin.

Station owner Wade Wilkes said he was impressed partly by Rosenthal’s background — and because French repeatedly declined to appear on the station. Wilkes said he’s also concerned that French doesn’t know the oil and gas industry well and is in thrall to big-money donors.

“Jon is not that way, and so I think that if you look at it from those angles, that yeah, Jon's the better candidate,” he said.

French led the race over Rosenthal by just 45% to 44%, according to a poll released Sept. 25 by Texas Public Opinion Research. That’s within the margin of error of 3.6 percentage points.

Another national pop came Sept. 28, when CNN published posts from deleted accounts that French allegedly made before running for the Railroad Commission, in which he called for former President Barack Obama and other high-profile Democrats to be publicly executed.

The steady drip of controversy could erode French’s support even further among the oil industry.

“I think it changes the dynamics out there,” Tyler Harris, the CEO of Breakthrough Oil & Gas, said last month on the sidelines of the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin. “The Railroad Commission is a reflection of the oil industry.”

Rosenthal has largely closed a fundraising gap, raising about $488,000 from July to late September, compared with about $440,000 for French.

But French had more cash on hand going into the final month before Election Day — about $530,000 to Rosenthal’s $378,000, campaign finance reports show.

Meanwhile, the Texas Oil and Gas Association’s political action committee has endorsed French, although the PAC said in a statement it disagreed with French’s comments about the University of Texas. The association hasn’t responded to recent requests for comment on the race.

French has positioned the election as one about the future of Texas, saying on his website he wants to “Defend the Texas Miracle” as oil and gas drive the state’s economy.

Rosenthal said he’s reserving optimism for Election Day.

“It’s an uphill climb, and there’s some stuff that still has to happen,” Rosenthal said last month.