Kappas and Omegas form Super PAC to back Obama

By Herb Boyd
Contributing Writer

(Special to the NNPA from the New York Amsterdam News) — Kappas and Omegas on the same page?

Yes, and the two Black fraternities — Kappa Alpha Psi and Omega Psi Phi — have come together to forge 1911 United, a super PAC with the goal of raising more than $1 million to help President Barack Obama get reelected.

The PAC, taking its name from the fact that both fraternities were founded a century ago, will focus most of its resources on the campaign in Colorado, Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, according to a recent news story on Politico.com.

Obama needs bolstering, said Sinclair Skinner, the committee’s treasurer. “And we want to use all the means possible to support him, including a super PAC. Black political participation is still evolving, and what we hope to do is get as many voters active in the process as early as possible,” he added.

Essential to this initiative, Skinner related, is to “organize and deploy” Black voters, especially first-time voters. Ob­viously, social networking and phone banking will be key targets given the habits of young potential Black voters.

“We’re really going to focus on working with people directly,” said Skinner, a mechanical engineer.

The presidential election of 2012 will be the first time super PACs or independent expenditure-only com­mittees will go into effect. They came into existence by virtue of a Supreme Court decision in 2010 that ruled in favor of Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission and SpeechNow.org v. the Federal Election Commission.

Super PACs can spend unlimited sums of money supporting or opposing political candidates as long as they are not involved in the campaigns.

To date, huge sums of money from the super PACs have been earmarked to promote and attack GOP candidates, including those run by former members of Obama’s staff.

1911 United will certainly assist Obama’s bid for office, and it joins with Priorities USA Action, run by two of Obama’s former White House aides, one of the largest of those backing the president. It was reported that nearly all of its funds, more than $300,000, have been used to attack Mitt Romney.

This article was originally published in the January 16, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper