Tarrant County Republican Party — French’s Former Party Chairmanship
Republican Railroad Commission candidate Bo French says he never agreed to debate Democratic state Rep. Jon Rosenthal in Dallas on Thursday, flatly denying an account from the event’s organizers that both campaigns had settled on a date weeks ago. The dispute means voters in one of Texas’s most closely watched down-ballot races will not get to see the candidates share a stage before early voting wraps up, since the Dallas forum was billed as the only public event where voters would hear from statewide candidates together.
French told the Texas Tribune that both the Dallas Press Club and Rosenthal were lying about an agreed debate, saying he first learned of the supposed arrangement only after Rosenthal publicly claimed the two sides had a deal. French said his campaign never contacted Rosenthal’s campaign at all, and argued that any such conversation would show up in the press club’s call log — a log the organization has not been able to produce. He also said he saw no need to correct the public record earlier because, in his view, Rosenthal’s alleged misstatements should have spoken for themselves…