Category Archives: federal election commission

Bloomberg: “Barack Obama pledged as a presidential candidate to strengthen the Federal Election Commission and nominate members ‘committed to enforcing our nation’s election laws.’ Since taking office, he hasn’t pushed for achievement of either goal.”

BNA reports on “the latest in a series of split votes, reflecting strong disagreements among FEC Republicans and Democrats about enforcing requirements in campaign finance law to inform the public about who authorized a political message and who is paying for it.”

Here:

The next election promises to be the most expensive in history. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent by outside groups. More and more of these dollars come from organizations that do not disclose information about their donors. As in the last cycle, most of this money likely will be concentrated on races in a few key states and districts. In some of these races, outside spending may dominate the debate. And money from outside groups likely will go disproportionately to fund negative advertisements.
Such a proliferation of anonymous, negative speech cannot be good for our democracy. Nor is it consistent with the view of eight Justices of the Supreme Court, who ruled that “effective disclosure” is what “enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.” Moreover, as Justice Scalia recently noted in another case: “Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed. . . . [A] society which . . . campaigns anonymously . . . hidden from public scrutiny and protected from the accountability of criticism . . . does not resemble the Home of the Brave.” I remain hopeful that the Commission will one day take this insight to heart.

Here.

Tomorrow’s draft agenda has now been amended to include two notices of proposed rulemakings.  One would consider (though it does not commit to) strengthening disclosure requirements for contributions made to support independent expenditures.  The other would consider repealing some corporate and labor union limitations contained in FEC regulations which now appear unconstitutional under Citizens United.

Politico: “Behind closed doors they snipe at each other. In public they question each other’s motives. And in front of Congress, they hang each other out to dry. That’s life on the Federal Election Commission, a panel that is supposed to answer the most important questions in campaign finance law, but whose commissioners can’t always manage civility, never mind reach agreements on the biggest fundraising and spending questions it’s tasked to answer.”

This is as we expected.  Pathetic but predictable.

BNA: “Under pressure from a congressional subcommittee, the Federal Election Commission has provided the House panel with documents describing its internal enforcement procedures, but the documents have not yet been made public.”

See this press release.  See also this NYT editorial.

See this press release about this report.

So reports BNA.

BNA reports.

Politico scoop. Biersack is ever helpful, especially with data, and has had to negotiate some very treacherous waters being the unitary spokesman for an increasingly dysfunctional and divided Commission.  He will be missed!

BNA (subscription required) has the details.

Spoiler alert: Rep. Grayson’s name was on a fundraising invite for a state candidate, asking for contributions from an “individual, corporation, PAC, or trust.” Grayson contends that a staffer approved his participation without his consent. No sign of a Danielczyk defense.

Sean Parnell (Center for Competitive Politics) and Sheila Krumholz (Center for Responsive Politics) were on the Colbert Report last night, with continuing entertaining coverage of some very real issues. Sean’s got interesting further thoughts on the exchange, here.

Update: More on the Colbert Bump, here.

$4800 transfers from account to account to account, but 3-3 at the FEC.

While Stephen Colbert got all the attention at the FEC today (link to commission audio), the more important substantive decision was the unanimous vote of the FEC to prevent the reopening of a soft money loophole in campaign finance law.  It’s not every day (in fact, it’s usually not any day) that the FEC’s actions get praise from Fred Wertheimer.

What happened and why?

Here’s the back story: Jim Bopp announced the formation of a Republican “super PAC”–a political committee which does not make any contributions directly to federal candidates, and which, thanks to recent court and FEC rulings may take unlimited contributions (from individuals, corporations, and labor unions) to be spent on independent ads supporting or opposing federal candidates. What made Bopp’s proposal unique is that he would use Republican officeholders to raise unlimited sums for the Super PAC.  It would not only create a “shadow” Republican party—it would get elected officials back in the business of raising unlimited sums from corporate, union, and wealthy contributors, effectively reversing the “soft money ban” put in place by McCain-Feingold.  Not only did the Supreme Court uphold that ban in McConnell v. FEC (in a portion of the opinion not touched by Citizens United), even Justice Kennedy voted to uphold key parts of the ban on elected officials soliciting unlimited funds to benefit their political parties.

Democratic lawyers, including Marc Elias, in a savvy move, then filed an Advisory Opinion request, asking the FEC to rule on whether such unlimited fundraising is legal, or whether such solicitations need to be within the $5,000 limit for PACs which are not “super-PACs.”  So Elias got the FEC to rule on whether Bopp’s plan is legal.

Today the FEC voted on that advisory opinion request, saying that elected officials may not raise unlimited funds for super-PACs. I have not seen any news reports yet, but Sean Parnell tweets that the Commission, on a 6-0 vote, approved a revised version of Draft A to AO request 2011-12. It’s a good thing too, because it really would have eviscerated the soft money limits.

Why was the FEC vote 6-0, when we’ve been seeing lots of 3-3 FEC deadlocks recently, with the Republican Commissioners refusing, in my view, to fairly enforce the law?

I think Jim Bopp’s proposal was a bridge too far, even for the three FEC Commissioners.  Not only would there have been a public outcry, but I imagine the issue would have ended up in the courts, and created great uncertainty as the 2012 election season gets into full swing.  It reminds me of when Judge Kavanaugh rejected a lawsuit by Bopp seeking to end the soft money limits.  Judge Kavanaugh, no friend of campaign finance regulation, said that the time may come when the Supreme Court would overturn McConnell and hold the soft money limits clearly imposed by Congress as unconstitutional.  But until then he was bound by Congress and the Court.

So the three Republican commissioners deserve great praise today for their vote in this case, but I have low expectations going forward, given the Commissioners’ recent votes in coordination and disclosure cases, as well as their position on the post-Citizens United rulemaking.

A reader writes in to say that I making an unsubstantiated assumption in viewing the original Draft A as the position of the Democratic commissioners.  A fair point:  Both Drafts A and B came from the staff, and so we don’t know exactly who supported and wrote what behind the scenes.  My assumption was based upon the idea that Draft A was less willing to give a broad press exemption than draft B, and therefore more likely to come from the Democratic Commissioners.

Meanwhile, I’m following Ken Vogel’s live tweets of the meeting.

Now posted on tomorrow‘s agenda, a new draft AO in Colbert and on the Party Super PAC issue.  We’ll see what, if anything, gets a majority vote.

Meanwhile, Commissioners Bauerly and Weintraub have posted some strong statements of reasons opposing the Republican Commissioners in Unknown Respondents, Yoder, and the Christine O’Donnell/Tea Party case (this statement joined by Commissioner Walther).  The last one ends as follows:

“Reason to believe” is a threshold determination fthat by itself does not establish that the law has been violated. In fact, “reason to believe” determinations indicate only that foe Commission has found sufficient legal justification to open an investigation to determine whether there is probable cause to believe that a violation of foe Act has occurred. Here, the campaign press secretary represented to a radio station employee that he spoke daily with the third  party paying for a supposedly independent communication on that radio station. If that is not enough information to begin an investigation into coordination, it is unclear what would be enough.

Dead, dead, dead.

TPM reports.  More from CCP.

National Journal: “A Crossroads spokesman and campaign-finance watchdogs alike agree that the FEC request is easily sidestepped. It applies only to contributions that were specifically earmarked for independent expenditures. Donations to Crossroads, group spokesman Jonathan Collegio told National Journal, were never earmarked that way.”

Jeff Patch has written this article for the Iowa Republican.

Here.

Bloomberg reports.  Quoth Craig Holman: “I’ve never seen an FEC this bad before..They’re just giving the green light to everyone saying, ‘We’re not going to enforce the laws; you can do whatever you want.’”

As I’ve said, the FEC is as good as dead.