SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
(Score: 2) by Blymie on Monday November 19 2018, @11:26AM
To be fair, the article doesn't say that he lots his seat because of him pushing for it.
What the article does say, is that it demonstrates that it was seen as a liability, because the political attack ad (shown in the article), uses his stance on science -- and this mission, to denounce him as .. well, "silly".