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Abbott’s mixed messages on who’s to blame for Texas power woes ‘not useful’, communications experts say

February 18, 2021 Dallas News Comments Off on Abbott’s mixed messages on who’s to blame for Texas power woes ‘not useful’, communications experts say 113 Views

AUSTIN — One minute, Gov. Greg Abbott is blaming the woes of millions of power-deprived Texans on managers of the state’s electricity grid — and the freezing of natural gas supplies and generators.

The next, he’s on Fox News, attributing Texas’ worst winter-weather disaster in decades to wind and solar power outages, which he says illustrate how a “Green New Deal” will be “a deadly deal.”

On Wednesday, several communications, corporate ethics and political messaging experts criticized the Republican governor’s public comments as confusing, “not useful,” an attempt to shield himself from conservatives’ disfavor and perhaps a result of “panic and deflection.”

While people are suffering, they noted, it doesn’t signal strength and leadership to be talking politics — and not owning any responsibility, though Abbott’s a seven-year chief executive of the nation’s second-largest state.

Leighanne Katz, left, dressed in a Thunder Buddies costume and Billian Lawal, right, in a Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer costume walk from a 7-Eleven convenience store at the intersection of Elm St and Ervay St on Wednesday, February 17, 2021, in downtown Dallas.

1/23Leighanne Katz, left, dressed in a Thunder Buddies costume and Billian Lawal, right, in a Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer costume walk from a 7-Eleven convenience store at the intersection of Elm St and Ervay St on Wednesday, February 17, 2021, in downtown Dallas.(Irwin Thompson)

Even some Republicans faulted Abbott’s approach.

“Flame-throwing rhetoric raises more donor dollars than solving problems,” said Justin Pitcock of Houston, who’s active in Principles First, a grassroots organization that says it is renewing conservative politics.

“It’s a bad look to everyone who ranks ‘owning the libs’ below, say, improving an inadequate infrastructure complex,” said Pitcock, a Marine reserve pilot and owner of a Texas-based logistics business.

At a Wednesday afternoon news conference in Austin, though, Abbott said he hasn’t offered inconsistent explanations.

“I have repeatedly talked about how every source of power that the state of Texas has has been compromised,” he said. “I was asked a question on one TV show about renewable (sic), and I responded to that question.”

Abbott was referring to his Tuesday night appearance on Fox’s “The Sean Hannity Show,” in which Hannity asked him what good wind turbines are if freezing weather can hobble them.

“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States,” Abbott replied. “Our wind and our solar, they got shut down and they were collectively more than 10% of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis.”

As of 9 a.m. Wednesday, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said 61% of the 46,000 megawatts of generation that had been “forced off the system during this extreme winter weather event” is from fossil-fuel or nuclear sources. Just 18,000 megawatts was wind and solar.

Victoria de Francesco Soto, assistant dean for civic engagement at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, said the nearly statewide outages have been “a cluster” that could haunt Abbott politically.

The governor offered contradictory explanations, she said.

“It’s probably a combination of just kind of panic and deflection, and lack of information,” she said. “I would say that that’s probably the combination, but trying to blame things on the Green New Deal? … It doesn’t seem like the [wind] turbines were really at fault.”

Rita Kirk, a professor of corporate communications and public affairs at Southern Methodist University, said Abbott’s “finger pointing” and “proposing quick fix reforms is not useful at the peak of a crisis.”

People have needed practical information, such as explanations for why outages weren’t rotating but, for many, long-lasting, she said.

Abbott did hold a 45-minute briefing late Wednesday. It included four state officials discussing utilities, natural gas production, drinking water and warming centers.

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