Austin Mayor Steve Adler on Friday refused to slam on Sen. Ted Cruz over his trip to Mexico during Texas' power and water crisis, despite the senator's criticism of the mayor's trip to Cabo late last year.
"I am entirely focused on getting food and water to the people in my community that don't have it this morning," the Democrat city leader told NBC "Today" anchor Savannah Guthrie. "I'll leave those issues to Sen. Cruz and his voters."
Adler came under fire for recording a video from a timeshare in Cabo, Mexico and telling people to stay home as the holidays approached. Cruz slammed the mayor as a hypocrite after the video.
Meanwhile, Adler told Guthrie that his city and state were not prepared for cold temperatures that came along with a massive storm that ended up with Texans losing power through a series of rolling power outages.
Even now that power is being restored, Adler said the situation "feels like one thing after another, after another.
“We had about 220,000 people, customers, off," said Adler. "We're back now to 16,800 customers. That's a marked improvement, but still, 70-60,000 have been without power in and out for almost a week … I'm real nervous about the number of pipes we're going to find that have been busted, additional water leaks."
Residents that do have water service are to boil it before use, he added.
Meanwhile, the mayor said that the state's deregulated power system does not work, and even though Gov. Greg Abbott "took responsibility," that is something state leaders should do.
"This shouldn't happen," said Adler. "They need to change the system, the regulatory system, how we do power.”
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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