New super PAC takes moon shot
No space rock is so political as the moon.
President John F. Kennedy vowed to land a man there and return him safely to Earth.
President Richard Nixon presided over humanity's first successful moon landing, all while prepping for the worst.
More recently, Newt Gingrich — to innumerable snickers — promised that, as president, he'd colonize the moon.
It's fitting, therefore, that the 2016 election will feature a decidedly lunar super PAC.
Dubbed the "America is Super PAC" and officially registered with federal regulators Sunday, the new committee is led by three members of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Science Operations Center team at Arizona State University.
The America is Super PAC is "entirely unrelated" to their work on the orbiter project, said Nick Estes, one of the super PAC's founders.
But the trio shares "some common interests and political views, and we decided to give this a go as private citizens," he added.
Those common interests, Estes says, include concerns about corporate interests' expanded role in politics and a desire to increase federal spending on basic research and education.
The America is Super PAC probably won't itself grow too big, Estes acknowledged.
Nevertheless, he said, the super PAC plans to "raise what funds we can to inform the public about candidates who share our views" on basic research and education. America is Super PAC has not yet chosen specific candidates to support, he added.
"We formed the PAC partly as an exercise to see first-hand how the system works, and partly to try to do some good with it," Estes said.
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This story is part of Primary Source. Primary Source keeps you up-to-date on developments in the post-Citizens United world of money in politics. Click here to read more stories in this blog.
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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
