I am a lifelong (58 years old) Democrat. So when I see our local ambitious Mayor deliver yet another master class in tone-deafness, I feel the need to warn a broader audience, lest he continue his advance through the party ranks. Coming on the heels of a warning not to travel because of covid that delivered via videotape from a timeshare in Cabo (really!), today Austin mayor Steve Adler led a press conference to address the wide swathes of our city that have been without power in sub-freezing temperatures for over 12 hours. Dressed in a lightweight shirt in an obviously well-heated home or office with plenty of mood lighting, the Mayor assured the city that “we are all in this together.”
This, while asking the remainder of the city with power to conserve, in order to restore it faster to those who don’t. As he and several others, including our t-shirt wearing city manager, bloviated for 40 nearly information-free minutes, even as Facebook commenters with no way to charge their phones begged them to get to the point. And as an Austin Energy rep provided vague, self-contradictory, and self-serving excuses for how and why what were supposed to have been “rotating blackouts” of ~40 minutes have turned into a life threatening disaster that, according to the same rep, is unlikely to end before tomorrow afternoon. And an emergency services manager simultaneously told people to stay off the iced over roads, and to drive to the covid-infested auditorium warming center.
And just a half-hour ago, comes this, from the city’s FB page:
Please stay home + off the roads.
If it is unsafe for you to stay home, please find a safe way to get to Palmer Events Center for a warming center or go to a friends home.
No suggestions on what that safe way would be, exactly, much less any help for those unable to do so, who are nevertheless freezing in their homes.
When this guy comes hunting higher office, don’t say I didn’t warn you. When the GQP points to this massive failure of Austin’s Democratic leadership during the next Texas statewide elections, don’t be surprised.