Austin mayor tells residents to 'stay home' while he is in Mexico to celebrate a wedding

Austin Mayor Steve Adler called upon residents of the Texas capital to "stay home if you can" while he was vacationing in Cabo San Lucas in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, the Statesman reports.

Adler made the comments from a timeshare where he was celebrating the wedding of his daughter. The wedding, which took place in November, hosted 20 guests. After the wedding ceremony, he boarded a private jet along with his guests to vacation in Mexico.

In a Facebook video released from his vacation spot, Adler told the residents of Austin that they "need to stay home if you can. This is not the time to relax. We are going to be looking really closely... We may have to close things down if we are not careful."

While Adler did not technically break coronavirus-related restrictions, his own government was recommending to the citizens of Austin that they not gather in groups of more than ten people at once. "It’s important that we drive the [coronavirus] numbers down in advance of Thanksgiving," he said at the time.

Adler told the Statesman that he and his family spent hours considering how to make the wedding and subsequent vacation as safe as possible. While masks were distributed at the event, Adler admitted that the guests were "probably not" wearing them during most of the wedding.

"It is not perfect. Obviously, there are infections that could happen, but I think all of us should be minimizing risks as best we can," Adler said.

Adler also admitted that he did not take a coronavirus test after returning from Mexico, but that he "generally quarantined," although he did not expand on what he meant by "generally."

"Everyday since March, I repeat that being home is the safest place for people to be," Adler claimed in a statement released Wednesday. "Only at our most trying moments, like around Thanksgiving, have I asked people not to travel as part of extra precautions. It is safest to stay home. However, we aren’t asking people to never venture out. We ask everyone to be as safe as possible when they do."

Speaking about his daughter, the mayor said she "was having to make adjustments in order to stay compliant with the orders from the health director here in Austin and the orders I issued as mayor." He further insisted that his family is "no exception" to coronavirus restrictions. This despite telling people to "stay home" while he was travelling internationally.