Black executives are banding together to form a political action committee in 2018 in the hopes of advocating for issues like education and job creation, according to a Monday report.
The black business executives decided to create the PAC after a July dinner with political figures like the former Dallas mayor and Sen. Kamala Harris, The New York Times reported.
Former Dallas Mayor Ronald Kirk urged the group at the dinner to get organized and stop wasting money, leading some of the black business owners gathered to begin planning the PAC. The group wants to launch the PAC by early 2018.
“What we’ve been doing is just writing checks for years, and we don’t know what happened,” Charles Phillips said. “We’ve got to learn from the Koch brothers, do what they do, have them sign pledges.”
The PAC has 10 main organizers, including Infor executive head Phillips, Viacom’s global inclusion strategy head Marva Smalls and Tony Coles, the head of Yumanity. The group meets on Sundays to go over the plan for the PAC’s creation. The business owners have envisioned a three part PAC: a “super PAC” that can run political ads, a nonprofit arm, and a federal PAC that can throw its weight behind candidates in races.
The group said it would support any candidate from any party that aligned to their PAC’s core issues like education access, voter participation and jobs.
“As African Americans have advanced in business, and assumed important positions across the board,” Coles said to The NYT. “I think we are finding our way to adding to or extending what many of our forebears have done. And in a sense, it’s our turn now, to contribute to this kind of leadership.”
A former aide to a Missouri secretary of state launched a Black Lives Matter Super PAC in 2015. While the Black Lives Matter group has repeatedly shied away from endorsing political candidates, the super PAC sharing its name is aimed at educating people on the candidates running.
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