Austin, Texas, Mayor Steve Adler made a video urging residents to stay home due to the COVID-19 pandemic from his timeshare in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
“EXCLUSIVE: Austin Mayor Steve Adler told the public to ‘stay home if you can…this is not the time to relax’ in a Nov. 9 Facebook video. He did not disclose that he was at a timeshare in Cabo San Lucas after flying on a private jet with eight family members and guests,” Austin American-Statesman reporter Tony Plohetski revealed on Twitter.
EXCLUSIVE: Austin Mayor Steve Adler told the public to “stay home if you can…this is not the time to relax” in a Nov. 9 Facebook video. He did not disclose that he was at a timeshare in Cabo San Lucas after flying on a private jet with eight family members and guests. pic.twitter.com/w1uZahGfpM
— Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) December 2, 2020
At the time that the city of Austin was advising residents not to gather in groups of more than 10, Adler, a Democrat, hosted an outdoor wedding with 20 guests for his daughter at a downtown Austin hotel, the Austin American-Statesman reports.
Adler and seven of the wedding’s guests then boarded a private jet the next morning and headed to the mayor’s timeshare in Cabo San Lucas, vacationing there for a week.
Adler made the Facebook video while on the trip, urging Austin residents to “stay home if they can” and warning that they “may have to close things down if we are not careful” amid rising cases of COVID-19.
Adler denied that hosting the wedding or traveling internationally was a violation of his own order or orders from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
The mayor said in a statement that he would not travel over the Christmas holiday and apologized for setting “a bad example.”
“I regret this travel. I wouldn’t travel now, didn’t over Thanksgiving, and won’t over Christmas. But my fear is that this travel, even having happened during a safer period, could be used by some as justification for risky behavior. In hindsight, and even though it violated no order, it set a bad example for which I apologize,” he said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican whose district includes parts of Austin, called the mayor’s actions a “complete joke.”
“It’s an absolute abomination,” Roy said on Twitter. “Not surprising… but a complete joke. The Austin local government is killing small business, cutting police funding, and harassing citizens – all while the mayor ignores his own rules.”
The revelation comes as several prominent Democrats have been seen breaking their own COVID-19 restrictions since the pandemic began.
