Could there be potential political fallout following Hurricane Beryl?

AUSTIN, Texas - Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Saturday that the federal government has approved disaster assistance for 17 more Texas counties hardest hit by Hurricane Beryl.

Qualifying Texans in the following counties are now eligible for assistance from FEMA: Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson, Liberty, Matagorda, Montgomery, Nacogdoches, Orange, Polk, San Jacinto, Walker, and Wharton. 

As of Saturday, July 13, Gov. Abbott himself was in Asia on an economic trip as more than 450,000 Houston-area residents remained without power days after the storm.

Scott Braddock, editor of QuorumReport.com, spoke with FOX 7 Austin's John Krinjak about potential political fallout from this deadly storm in this FOX 7 Focus.

JOHN KRINJAK: Talk to us about the dynamics there, with [Joe] Biden stepping in with federal relief, the governor not physically being here in the state as all of this has unfolded. How is this shaping up politically?

SCOTT BRADDOCK: You know, I've been covering hurricanes and governors in Texas for decades. Not a lot surprises me in Texas politics anymore. But to see the governor not here when there's a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico potentially going to hit the state. My jaw was on the floor last Friday and Saturday. I couldn't believe that he was going to continue on and do this trip to Asia. I would say it this way, and we said it this way on our podcast, the Texas Take Podcast, which people can find anywhere they enjoy podcasts. 

Look, the governor in Asia saying that he has, you know, reached some agreements to bring 100 jobs to Texas or 50 jobs to Texas. That's a great press release when you don't have millions of people without power in your state. One fourth of Texans live in the areas that can be affected by a hurricane. And so you just don't leave. Back in 2008, Governor Rick Perry, at that time, he skipped the RNC. He didn't go to the Republican National Convention because there was a hurricane in the Gulf, which ended up not even hitting Texas. But he didn't want to take that risk. 

So there are two things. One, it's the continuity of governance, which is the most important thing about this, that you have the people who always do these things and always handle these things in place to respond and respond as quickly as possible. And the other thing is just the optics. It just looks bad. You don't leave your people when they're in the midst of a crisis. That's leadership 101.

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JOHN KRINJAK What do you make of all the calls for an investigation into the power outages? Into the restoration? Obviously, we've had quite a few instances in the last few years of big scale power failures. But what seems to be a lot of people echoing the calls for an investigation here. Does that feel genuine or does it feel political?

SCOTT BRADDOCK: Hurricane relief, hurricane disaster response is always political. Go all the way back to almost 20 years ago, Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. And the way that there was a back and forth between the Democratic governor and the Republican president at that time, George W. Bush. There was a lot of finger pointing. There's always going to be finger pointing after, you know, people lose power for a week. You know, they're cleaning out their apartments and cleaning out their refrigerators because it smells like death in there. It's a bad situation. 

People want to know who to blame. And so, of course, you have Lieutenant Governor Patrick and the mayor in Houston, John Whitmire, saying that it's CenterPoint, which is the government-mandated monopoly for southeast Texas. If you have a business or a home in that area, you're dealing with CenterPoint. And so they were grilled this week at the Public Utility Commission. I'm sure they'll have more hearings legislatively. Lieutenant Governor Patrick's promising to do something about it, coming up in maybe in the next legislative session. We'll see. 

But the politics of a hurricane, it doesn't happen on the day that landfall is made by the storm. It always happens in the days, weeks, months, and years after that storm. I mean, there are still things that are having to be addressed about Hurricane Harvey. That was back in 2017. And Congress is still working on some of the response to that. So we'll be looking at the blame game about this storm for a long time to come.

JOHN KRINJAK All right. Scott Braddock, editor of QuorumReport.com. Scott, thanks so much for being here. We appreciate it.

SCOTT BRADDOCK: John, thank you.