Cruz's Cancun trip criticised in city hit by storm

There appeared to be little popular support for Texas Senator Ted Cruz in Plano city on Thursday, after the politician flew to Mexico for a family vacation - even as hundreds of thousands of people were still grappling with the fallout of a deadly winter storm that crippled the state’s power grid.

Outside Grace Church in the city of about 300,000 near Dallas, water was being handed out to residents whose supply still had not come back on.

Local council member Kayci Prince said a lot of Plano residents were "hurting", first because of the lack of heat and then the lack of water.

She described the impact of the storm as a "bad collision of a lot of things not working right".

Many believe Cruz should have stayed in Texas to help oversee the response, and the senator himself said his family vacation to Cancun was “obviously a mistake” as he returned stateside on Thursday following the uproar over his disappearance.

The Associated Press and other media outlets reported that he had traveled out of the country with his family as hundreds of thousands of Texans were still grappling with the fallout of a winter storm that crippled the state’s power grid.

The trip has drawn criticism from leaders in both parties and was seen as potentially damaging to his future political ambitions.