Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) has decided to close her congressional campaign account and take the remaining money in there to start a new committee to boost lawmakers that supported a bipartisan gun control measure.
Giffords, who left office after wounded in a 2011 mass shooting, will transfer about $300,000 from her campaign account and use it to start the Rights and Responsibilities PAC, according to Politico. To be exact, the new political action committee will get $287,702 from Giffords’s old campaign account.
The first donations from the PAC will go to Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA), who supported a measure that would have expanded background checks to certain types of gun sales. Both senators had high ratings from the National Rifle Association before they began pushing that bill.
Giffords’s new PAC also plans to donate to Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Kay Hagan (D-NC). Collins and Hagan also supported the Manchin-Toomey legislation. Collins and Hagan are both up for reelection in 2014.
