What was Texas Governor Greg Abbott thinking? Obviously showed poor leadership and lack of sound judgement

Abbott and Patrick botched the response to Hurricane Beryl
Where is Governor Abbott while his Texas constituents are suffering❓ Echo editorial opinion published in the Houston Chronicle.  #WWHT❓❗

Guess what? The temperature was pleasant in Tokyo, Gov. Greg Abbott’s third and final city on a nine-day run to the Far East, with rain, no wind. Seoul, South Korea, the second city on a junket that began July 5, was about the same but sunny. Taipei, Taiwan, the first city Abbott and his trade delegation visited, was hot — but then, like those other two metropolises, Taipei has air conditioning. Each day, the governor posted Twitter-X updates about how well his Asian hosts were receiving him and his entourage.

Heck of a job, guys: Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott muffed the response to Hurricane Beryl, each in their own special way.

But Gulf Coast Texans were, shall we say, less than pleased that Abbott was 7,000 miles across the Pacific when Hurricane Beryl wreaked havoc on our region. At least 13 people have lost their lives in the Houston area, and countless others suffered damage to their homes and businesses as trees and structures toppled across the area. Millions lost electricity.

Still, the governor saw no need to cut his trip short. We don’t begrudge Abbott a planned economic-development junket, particularly if he entices a few foreign companies to invest in Texas. But we certainly question his judgment. When disaster strikes, we expect a governor to be on the scene.

“Greg,” we’re tempted to remark, “you’re doing a heck of a job.”😖😧😲 Younger readers may not catch the reference to another Texan who muffed a hurricane response: That would be President George W. Bush, who in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, deigned to fly over the flooded city but not touch down. Bush then praised his overwhelmed director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the job he wasn’t doing: “Brownie,” enthused George W., “you’re doing a heck of a job.” 

With Abbott AWOL, (aka "missing in action") - the incompetent Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (Houston’s own❗) happily donned his official disaster shirt and dress-rehearsed his gubernatorial dreams. He did fine, except for the fact that he forgot that it’s up to the governor (in this case, the acting governor) to contact the White House and request an official disaster declaration. That call activates desperately needed federal aid.

Incredibly, President Joe Biden told the Houston Chronicle last Tuesday that he had to personally reach out to Patrick for a formal request a day after the storm hit. “I’ve been trying to track down the governor to see — I don’t have any authority to do that without a specific request from the governor,” Biden said in a call.

Both Texans denied Biden’s account. Patrick wrote on X that the president was “falsely accusing” him of being unreachable. An Abbott spokesperson called Biden’s comments “a complete lie.” But neither the governor nor the lieutenant governor said they had tried to contact the White House themselves, even though federal law states that all requests for the president to issue a disaster declaration “shall be made by the Governor of the affected state.”

Rafael Lemaitre, a former national director of public affairs for FEMA, told the Texas Tribune that Texas should have made its disaster appeal sooner, since reports of power outages, deaths and devastation were “more than sufficient” to initiate the request. He pointed out that governors “can always amend their requests later as they get more information.”

Money from the feds is vital. It can be used to get tree limbs and other debris removed from yards and streets, to get a roof back on a house, to repair downed power lines and to provide emergency supplies. Federal aid also helps cover expenses for temporary housing.

Both Patrick and Abbott have said they intend to launch investigations into CenterPoint Energy’s abysmal failure to maintain a grid capable of withstanding a Category 1 hurricane. Abbott urged the state Public Utility Commission to investigate why the region has endured multiple outages in recent years. “They should not be losing power,” he told Bloomberg TV from Japan.

As Chronicle business columnist Chris Tomlinson points out, “CenterPoint is a $19 billion, for-profit corporation granted a monopoly over a hundred years ago to manage and maintain the transmission and distribution of electricity across the Houston region. This regulated utility failed to deliver power to 85% of customers during the height of a mild hurricane.”

Neither Abbott nor Patrick (nor Attorney General Ken Paxton) seem all that interested in finding out why the grid is still broken, even after promises from state officials to fix it in the aftermath of Uri. Neither, it seems, is the PUC, its members appointed by the governor to represent the interests of consumers but apparently more interested in cozying up to the industries they regulate. As Tomlinson points out — and as we have noted frequently — that’s what happens when Texans tolerate one-party rule for nearly three decades.

Those consumers the PUC are supposed to represent include a Magnolia resident we talked to who works from home. He told us that in the first four days after losing power, he had driven a total of 316 miles to either a Lowes or Kroger’s parking lot five or six miles from his house to connect to phone service and the internet. Once his wife recuperates from the major surgery she underwent a few days before Beryl hit, the couple will have to deal with downed trees on their property. Maybe by then their house will be cool.

The Magnolia couple’s story, of course, is different only in the details from countless others across the 121-county disaster area. Stories in this newspaper, in grocery store checkout lines and on Facebook community pages remind us that we’re all in this together, and no one’s happy.

Well, maybe that doesn’t apply to everyone. “Proud to announce in Seoul today that SeAH Group will build a new high-performance metal manufacturing facility in Temple,” our globe-trotting governor posted Tuesday, the day after Hurricane Beryl hit, as millions of Texans sweltered, without electricity in a week of life-threatening heat.  “Heck of a job,” indeed.