In a campaign ad posted to social media on Tuesday, Luke Warford, Democratic candidate for Texas Railroad Commission, highlighted the state’s response to the historic storm.
“What does the Texas Railroad Commission have to do with last February’s grid failure?” the ad’s narrator says. “Everything.”
Most of Texas’ power comes from natural gas, the ad continues, and the main cause of the grid’s failure was a drop in gas supply caused by freezing equipment. The Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) regulates that supply — something the ad claims the TRC failed to properly do after the grid nearly crashed during the winter in 2011. Since then, some critics have said not enough has been done to weatherize the natural gas system.A year ago today, the Texas power grid failed. There were billions of dollars in damages, and hundreds of Texans lost their lives.
— Luke Warford 🚂 (@LukeWarfordTX) February 15, 2022
What does the Texas Railroad Commission have to do with last year's grid failure?
Everything.
Together, we can hold the Commission accountable. pic.twitter.com/XXUmIu2xOw
Warford’s ad goes on to note that the same gas and oil executives who the commissioners are supposed to regulate contributed around 70% of their campaign donations. When the storm hit last year, the ad says, donors made billions while Texans were plunged into darkness.
Challengers on both sides of the aisle have cited the faulty grid in their campaigns. Gubernatorial candidates Democrat Beto O’Rourke and Republican Don Huffines — who sit on opposite ends of the political spectrum — have each homed in on the matter.
Warford has also zeroed in on the grid, an issue that regularly appears in his social media posts. He’s billed himself as a reformer focused on aiding regular Texans, contrasting with the current commissioners whom he claims prioritize campaign contributions over constituents.
Warford was a top staffer for the Texas Democratic Party who believes that Texans will benefit from his fresh approach to a longstanding problem. “I actually think a real strength of my candidacy is that I’m an outsider,” he told The Texas Tribune.
As early voting ramps up, Warford has witnessed national support. Vote Save America, a liberal voter engagement program, published a tweet encouraging Texas voters to get involved with the Democrat’s campaign. His new ad also got a boost after it was retweeted by Star Trek actor and activist George Takei.
Still, the TRC insisted in a January news release that of the thousands examined, around “98% of the facilities visited had been winterized.” Earlier this month, Winter Storm Landon did not upend the grid as some had feared, though it was far less severe than last year’s catastrophic weather event.This young man is an inspiration. I have worked with him on registering Texans to vote, and I can’t wait to see what he can do in elected office.
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) February 15, 2022
https://t.co/d6JijAJxDF
The power grid has become a major area of concern for many Texas residents, most of whom aren’t happy with the way lawmakers responded. In October, 60% of the state’s registered voters disapproved of the way leadership handled the problem, according to polling by the University of Texas/Texas Tribune. Just 18% reported that they approved.
Jim Henson is co-director of the poll and head of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Speaking with the Tribune, he described the looming doubts and uncertainty surrounding the power grid as a “mine waiting to go off.”
“If there’s another even moderate infrastructure problem in the state in the grid or service delivery writ large that can be connected with the February outages and the failure of the Legislature to respond in a way that people expect it to be effective, it’s a real political problem for incumbents,” he said, according to that outlet.
Texans often blame the federal government for high prices at the gas pump, said Darrell Lovell, an assistant professor of political science at West Texas A&M University. But the railroad commission has at least as much say in most things dealing with gas, oil, energy and petroleum.
In terms of this race, decades have passed since a Democrat was elected to serve on the railroad commission, Lovell said.
Democrats are making inroads in larger metropolitan areas but tend to have difficulty connecting with Texans in smaller towns, he said. That, paired with incumbents’ high success rates in Texas, could spell an uphill climb for Warford: “History tells us it’s going to take a significant effort for [Democrats] to be successful in statewide elections that we just have not seen evidence of yet.”
