Abbott’s vow: Power will stay on

Gov. Greg Abbott promised that the state’s electric grid would be able to withstand pressures caused by any potential winter storm that occurs this year in a television interview Friday.

“Listen, very confident about the grid. And I can tell you why, for one: I signed almost a dozen laws that make the power grid more effective,” Abbott said. “I can guarantee the lights will stay on.”

After the winter storm in February that left millions across the state without power, the Legislature passed a number of bills requiring additional “weatherization” measures for companies that maintain the state’s electric grid.

But experts have expressed concerns that loopholes have allowed some natural gas providers to exempt themselves from the weatherization requirements, potentially leaving the system still vulnerable.

“Everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas,” Abbott said in June when he signed two of the bills.

In a poll from the University of Texas-Austin and the Texas Tribune, voters were asked their opinion on the policies advanced by the Legislature throughout the regular and special sessions this year. Among the most popular were gun rights, public safety and the election laws, while “reliability of the electric grid” was dead last, with a negative 42 percent favorability rating.

In interviews earlier this month, a Republican political consultant and two political scientists said this amounted to a potential political vulnerability for Republicans, particularly if another winter storm hits that shuts down the grid.

“You’re going to have another winter and another summer that’s going to strain the electric grid,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor at the University of Houston. “If there’s any kind of problem for people, there’s a direct connection to how Democrats can use that to their political advantage against Republicans.”

Republicans have been in charge in Texas for 20 years, Rottinghaus said, so if people’s lives are affected negatively by major policy problems, it’s natural that the party in power is blamed for it.

Brendan Steinhauser, the GOP consultant, said Abbott’s potential political liability if there’s another freeze depends on whether Abbott gets the blame or is able to pass it on to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas or some other entity. Steinhauser said Abbott did that effectively earlier this year.

“You look at the numbers, certainly there’s a lot of dissatisfaction there. The question is: to what extent can those in power kind of point to someone else? Or to what extent are they held accountable as those who made bad decisions or didn’t do enough?” he said. “I think it could have been worse. I think (Republicans) could have been blamed more.”