O'Rourke knocks Abbott, says it's up to Texans to prevent another blackout

Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke (D) slammed the state's current Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Wednesday after Abbott warned that there could be power outages in Texas as the state braces for the upcoming winter storm.

O'Rourke tweeted on Wednesday that it's up to Texans to help one another during the storm.

"Abbott admits he hasn't done enough to prevent another blackout," he said. "It's on us to help one another. Please look at your utility's recommendations and consider turning thermostats down to 68, closing shades/blinds and unplugging non-essential lights/appliances."

In a Tuesday appearance on MSNBC, O'Rourke blasted Abbott and said the state was the "energy capital of the world, and you have far worse weather in other parts of America and you don't see this many outages."

"The fact is the governor was warned for years before 2021 that we had vulnerabilities in the grid and did nothing," he said.

O'Rourke added, "To add insult to injury after this grid failure, he has done nothing to fix the major culprit in the power outage last year, which was the lack of winterization of the gas supply."

His comments come as Abbott said during a Tuesday news conference that "no one can guarantee that there won't be a 'load shed event,'" referring to rolling blackouts.

"But what we will work and strive to achieve, and what we're prepared to achieve, is that the power is gonna stay on across the entire state," Abbott continued.

Early last year, unprecedented winter storms left millions of Texans without electricity or heat for days. Nearly 250 residents are believed to have died due to the winter storm outages.

Multiple leadership members of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the organization that operates Texas's electrical grid, resigned or were fired in light of the outages.

O'Rourke is planning on driving more than 2,000 miles across the state over 12 days in February to bring attention to its infrastructure a year after the storms. His road trip will involve public events across 12 Texas towns and cities, beginning in Odessa on Feb. 4 and ending in Houston on Feb. 15.

In its announcement of the trip, O'Rourke's campaign blasted Abbott, saying the governor "let the grid fail."

"Now that Abbott has still refused to fix the grid - protecting the profits of his donors instead of the lives of our families - it's important that we step up once more to make sure this never happens again," his campaign said.