AUSTIN, Texas — Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke will travel to 20 cities and towns across Texas over 12 days to mark the anniversary of the deadly February winter storms and power outages, his campaign announced Monday.
The trip — dubbed the "Keeping the Lights On" tour — will start in El Paso on Friday and end in Houston Feb. 15, the anniversary of the first day of the deadly freeze. O'Rourke will stop in Abilene, Wichita Falls, Austin, Corpus Christi and at least six other cities to speak about the outages and his plan for improving the reliability of the state's power grid.
Since launching his campaign for governor, O'Rourke has been a vocal critic of the state's response to the near catastrophic failure of the state's power grid, arguing that Gov. Greg Abbott and other state leaders have failed to take steps to secure the grid and prevent future widespread outages.
Abbott has applauded safety measures approved by lawmakers and regulators, telling Austin's Fox 7 in November that he is "very confident about the grid."
"I can guarantee the lights will stay on," he said.
A Dallas Morning News-University of Texas at Tyler poll released Sunday found that just 15% of registered voters said they had "a great deal of confidence" that the state's energy grid would be prepared for another deep freeze to ensure there are no blackouts in their community this winter. Thirty-one percent said they had a fair amount of confidence in the grid, 29% said not too much and 18% said they had no confidence.
The same poll found that 50% of respondents said the power grid was a more important policy issue than the Texas-Mexico border, while 41% of respondents said the border should be the top priority.
While O'Rourke has spoken frequently on the issue since launching his campaign in November, he has not shared his own plan to improve the grid. His campaign said he'll unveil his proposals during his statewide tour.
In December, O'Rourke told the American-Statesman he had five proposals to improve the grid's reliability: weatherize the natural gas supply by employing clear and enforceable standards, connect to the national energy grid to tap into additional power supply as needed, ensure critical facilities have backup generation available, enact "immediate and consistent" assistance for people facing rate increases after the storm and invest in energy efficiency programs to reduce demand and individual electricity bills.
Before Abbott and O'Rourke can face off at the polls, both candidates must first win their respective March 1 primary races. Early voting starts Feb. 14.
In the Republican primary, Abbott is facing former state Sen. Don Huffines, former Texas GOP Chairman Allen West, Chad Prather, Danny Harrison, Kandy Kaye Horn, Paul Belew and Rick Perry (not former Gov. Rick Perry).
O'Rourke is running in the Democratic primary and faces Michael Cooper, Joy Diaz, Inocencio Barrientez and Rich Wakeland.
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