Now, with Texas again facing cold winter months and hoping its infrastructure can hold up, O’Rourke has embarked on a 12-day, 2,100 mile ‘Keeping the Lights On’ road trip in his pickup truck that will see him hit 20 Texas cities and towns.
With the time and energy O’Rourke is devoting to amplifying the power grid failure that led to hundreds of Texans dying in the winter of 2021, it’s clear the campaign sees it as a winning issue.
“When Greg Abbott let the grid fail last February, we lost a lot of good people,” O’Rourke told Newsweek. “Texans literally froze to death in the energy capital of the world. Millions lost light, heat, and water.”
But even as the power grid failed Texans, O’Rourke said “they stepped up” and brought each other through the crisis.
“We would not fail each other,” he said. “Now that Abbott has still refused to fix the grid — protecting the profits of his donors instead of the lives of our families — it’s important that we step up once more to make sure this never happens again.”
O’Rourke is banking on the fact that the power grid failure that left 70% of Texans without power and half without running water is an issue that affected enough people angry with Abbott’s leadership that it could peel away moderate votes.
But the question is whether or not the memories of the winter will be still be fresh in the minds of the voters when they enter the voting booths in November.
A Texas Democrat who has spoken to the campaign regarding its strategy around the power grid said the issue still resonates with voters.
“The question, ‘Are people going to remember one year later?’ has been asked, but the anxiety that people felt with the frigid weather was so real recently, people damn sure remembered,” the source said.
“When there’s anxiety not knowing if water will run or you will be safe,” the source added, “that’s the most basic thing the government needs to provide, and I think you really blame Governor Abbott.”
John Wittman, Abbott’s former communications director, said the idea that the governor is responsible for the grid collapse is wrongheaded, when the legislature had a chance to fix it in 2011 when Abbott was attorney general, not governor.
He added that the grid held up well during the most recent cold snap, and slammed O’Rourke for his focus on the power grid.
“It’s a sad state of affairs when politicians are praying for a grid collapse in the state of Texas,” he told Newsweek. “The governor and legislature have ensured the grid collapse that happened in 2021 never happens again.”
Abbott signed legislation aimed at preventing blackouts that would require power plants to ensure they can meet demand during freezing winter weather. But the Texas Tribune reported that the changes will not be fully implemented for years.
O’Rourke has tweeted more than 75 times in the last two weeks about Abbott’s handling of the power grid, his Texas tour, and his plans to make sure it doesn’t happen again if he’s elected governor, while making the issue central to his campaign.
He has also tweeted about his meetings with people who were critically impacted by the storm, including a man identified as Steven who lost both of his legs.
During a tour stop Tuesday he told the story of Andy, a Vietnam veteran who was reliant on a breathing machine after being exposed to Agent Orange, and died of hypothermia while trying to power the machine in his truck after his home lost power.
O’Rourke’s five-point infrastructure plan to avoid similar problems during Texas winters if he is elected governor includes winterizing the power grid, connecting Texas to the national grid, helping the rate payer, ending price gouging, and instituting an independent market monitor for gas.
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, the president of NextGen America and former Democratic candidate for senate, said that while the power grid failure is a “big deal,” O’Rourke’s candidacy will need to resonate in Texas beyond this key issue.
“It won’t be as fresh in people’s minds in November, but every Texan I know was affected, half the state didn’t have running water,” she said. “I know friends who tried to keep their babies warm with their own body heat. They will remember. It won’t be enough to get over the finish line, but I don’t think Beto is counting on it to get him across the finish line either.”
But Artemio Muñiz, the chairman for Tejanos for George P. Bush, said O’Rourke’s focus on the power grid shows he has the Texas voter all wrong.
“The strategy shows again that Beto’s messaging is engineered from New York and California liberals, and they don’t know Texas,” he told Newsweek. “We just had a freeze and everything is fine.”
James Aldrete, an Obama and Hillary Clinton campaign veteran based in Texas, said for O’Rourke, the attacks on Abbott’s handling of the power grid drill down to issues of competency and trust.
Though he described the cold front last week as a “light freeze,” he said Texans “all carried PTSD” when they found themselves scrambling once again to stockpile food and firewood for an approaching storm.
“It’s an issue about competence,” Aldrete said. “We’re the energy capital of the world that had our grid practically collapse.”
