Forgiving a political rival is welcome act in these divided times

State Rep. Jon Rosenthal, a Democrat who represents Texas House District 135 in northwest Houston, isn’t a typical politician, and maybe not the most opportunistic one either.

Rosenthal has been dragged into the scandal roiling Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives in recent weeks, since the right-wing extremist Michael Quinn Sullivan alleged that Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen attempted to bribe him during a June 12 meeting in the Texas Capitol. Rosenthal — to be clear — has absolutely nothing to do with the scandal itself. He just responded as graciously as possible to the Republican colleagues who dragged him into it — even though they are also responsible for ensuring he couldn’t ignore the scandal completely, as he was still trying to do.

And, unfortunately for Rosenthal, the scandal is still unfolding.

Rosenthal’s name has been in the headlines of late because it appears in a blog post that Sullivan published several weeks ago, giving his account of the meeting. Rosenthal’s name comes up only in passing. Sullivan explained that his meeting with Bonnen and state Rep. Dustin Burrows, the chairman of the House GOP Caucus, began with some scurrilous small talk about their Democratic colleagues.

“Bonnen said he wants to fight the Democrats — offering amusing (if slightly vulgar) comments about Reps. Michelle Beckley (D-Carrollton) and Jon Rosenthal (D-Houston),” he wrote, before moving on to accuse Bonnen of even worse things.

Sullivan, not surprisingly, was secretly recording the meeting. And he has let a number of Republicans listen to the audio since Bonnen flatly denied offering him any sort of quid pro quo in the meeting. Those Republicans have confirmed that Bonnen did make some inappropriate comments about Rosen

thal and Beckley, before turning his attention to various Republican legislators that he wanted to target.

But the things that Bonnen said to Sullivan about his Republican colleagues were indeed shocking. In fact, one legislator told me, the Speaker was arguably “treading in felonia territory” about a week ago, shortly after the rumor mill got going.

Sullivan’s refusal to release the audio to the general public has

stirred further gossip. And some of it concerns what Bonnen might have actually said about Rosenthal and Beckley. Sullivan has claimed that he’s concerned the release of the audio would be damaging to the Republican

Party of Texas.

On Tuesday, Rosenthal issued a joint statement with Bonnen concerning the meeting that the pair had about the Speaker’s meeting with Sullivan and reported statements.

Rosenthal has also been scolded by some of his fellow Democrats because he decided to accept Bonnen’s apology — and

expressed a desire, in his own portion of the statement, to put this nonsense in the past now and get back to work for the families in Texas House District 135.

The joint statement is indeed a striking one, though, because the language that Rosenthal and Bonnen use in talking about each other stands in such stark contrast to the rhetoric we’ve become accustomed to hearing political leaders use in these divisive times, whether it be in Austin or Donald Trump’s Washington.

“I can truly say that I have

never sat across from a more humble and forgiving human being,” Bonnen writes in the statement, describing himself as “not a deserving recipient” of his colleague’s kindness and concern.

And Bonnen is right about that.

Rosenthal, a Democrat, would have been well within his rights to denounce the Republican Speaker for what he reportedly said about him behind closed doors. Rosenthal also could have taken the opportunity to denounce Republicans more generally. And that might have been a shrewder move, politically speaking, for a Democratic freshman representative — especially given that Rosenthal narrowly defeated a a longtime Republican incumbent in 2018 and knows that the GOP is targeting his seat in 2020.

But Rosenthal’s move was the right one.

As he wrote in his portion of the joint statement, “He made a mistake, as all humans do. He apologized, and I forgave him.”

There’s something to be said for forgiving your political rivals and moving on.