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posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 19 2018, @12:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the science-of-politics-and-politics-of-science dept.

The Planetary Society reports:

Representative John Culberson, an 8-term Texas Republican and staunch supporter of NASA and planetary exploration, lost his re-election bid to Democrat Lizzie Fletcher last week. Many factors played into this outcome, but one bears consideration by space advocates: his support for the scientific search for life at Europa was seen as a weakness and attacked accordingly.

Over the past four years, Culberson used his chairmanship of the Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) appropriations subcommittee to increase spending on NASA and missions to search for life on Europa. He directed hundreds of millions of dollars to this effort and played a critical role in getting the Europa Clipper mission officially adopted by NASA and the White House. And he did this without cannibalizing other NASA programs. His motivation was passion, not parochialism, as the prime benefactor of these federal dollars was California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, located far outside his Houston-area congressional district.


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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday November 19 2018, @02:37AM (2 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday November 19 2018, @02:37AM (#763744) Journal

    I was the leader of a decent sized grassroots activist group in the 00's. We were active in a lot of electoral races, one of which was the NYC mayor's race. The guy we backed against the self-funded billionaire lost.

    When we held the election post-mortem, one of our members, a paraplegic in a hoveround, gravely lamented that our candidate would have won had he only gone out strong for accessible taxi cabs (that was his hobby horse).

    Monday morning quarterbacking is as popular with political junkies as anyone else. With elections, it's seldom clear why one candidate wins, and another loses.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 19 2018, @07:21AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 19 2018, @07:21AM (#763813)

    This is one of those times when RTFA will help you.