A Democratic activist who recently won a Republican precinct chair race only to later be deemed ineligible by the Tarrant County Republican Party has filed a lawsuit.
Chris Rector won the Tarrant County Precinct 4230 race on March 5 with 75% of the vote. However, evidence surfaced afterward of Rector’s alleged affiliation with the Democratic Party, reported Texas Scorecard.
Tarrant County Republican Party Chair Bo French sent Rector a letter on March 13 in which he accused Rector of pretending to be a Republican in order to dismantle the party and stated he would not certify the election, reported the Fort Worth Report.
Rector, in turn, sued the Tarrant County Republican Party. Former Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair Steve Maxwell is representing Rector in the lawsuit, according to FWR.
French posted a letter on X on April 13 acknowledging the lawsuit and offering his take on it.
“Here are the facts. A Democrat ran for and won a seat as precinct chair for precinct 4230. Based on the public records available to me, I declared that man, Chris Rector, administratively ineligible for the position of precinct chair. Those records demonstrated that Rector is a member of the Democratic Party, ran for State Representative as a Democrat in 2022, ran for Congress as a Democrat during the 2024 election cycle, and has confessed he is ‘pretending to be a Republican,’ and that his goal as precinct chair would be to dissolve the Tarrant County GOP and merge it with the Democratic Party,” French claimed.
French used the opportunity to argue in favor of holding closed primaries in Texas.
“First off, this is why closing the Texas primary MUST be a top legislative priority next session. Secondarily, we are a private association, not a government body. We cannot be forced to accept this radical democrat as a member of our Party,” he wrote on X.
French told DX that Democrats are using “lawfare” — which Wikipedia defines as “the use of legal systems and institutions to damage or delegitimize an opponent” — against the Republican Party.
“Radical Democrats are using the same lawfare tactics against me and the Tarrant County GOP as against President Trump. They are terrified we are going to win this November, so they are trying to use judges to weaken our ability to win. I am not backing down and we will send these radicals back to whatever spider hole they came from,” French told DX.
The lawsuit filed by Rector and Maxwell claims that the Tarrant County Republican Party and French “concocted a bogus, fraudulent claim that Contestant was ineligible for the position to which he had been elected,” per FWR. The suit seeks a temporary restraining order to bar French from appointing an alternate chair for the precinct in question.
