National: Senate committee to soon vote on FEC nominees | The Center for Public Integrity

The Senate Rules and Administration Committee will soon schedule an early September vote on two Federal Election Commission nominees, two sources close to the nomination process tell the Center for Public Integrity. Such a vote means the full Senate could consider — and potentially approve — the nominations of Republican Lee E. Goodman, an attorney at law firm LeClairRyan, and Democrat Ann Ravel, chairwoman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, within weeks. As of Friday evening, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, of which Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is chairman, had not published an official notice of the vote.

National: FEC Democrats Try to Run Clock Out on GOP Attempt To End Cooperation With Justice | Main Justice

The Federal Election Commission again postponed its scheduled discussion of a controversial proposal to make it more difficult for the commission to cooperate with the Department of Justice. But not before engaging in a heated discussion about whether and when the matter will be addressed. Explaining her “prerogative to hold the matter over,” Weintraub said that McGahn did not submit his proposed changes to the manual until 10 p.m. on June 9, which did not leave her or then-general counsel Anthony Herman enough time to review the changes. She said she didn’t hold the discussion on June 27 after receiving a request to postpone it the night before from Republican Commissioner Caroline C. Hunter and her GOP colleagues.The commission originally intended to take up the proposal during its public meeting on June 13. But commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub held over discussion and did so again when the commission members gathered on June 27, July 9 and July 22.

National: The partisan Federal Election Commission | The Hill

It used to be broken by ideological divisions. But today it is broken by simple party politics. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) – the agency responsible for interpreting and enforcing federal campaign finance laws – is being swept under the bus of partisan one-up-manship. Republicans have gained a temporary one-seat majority on the Commission and they may take advantage of it for partisan purposes – namely, to associate the Obama Administration and Democrats generally with a conspiracy of using federal agencies to attack conservative nonprofit political organizations. In an unexpected twist, congressional Republicans Darrel Issa (R-Cal.) and Candice Miller (R-Mich.) have teamed up with at least one Republican colleague at the FEC in an effort to tie the agency to the ongoing story of whether high-level IRS staff inappropriately targeted the tax-exempt applications of groups based on partisanship. An email exchange from FEC staff to IRS staff requesting public information about the tax status of a conservative political organization prompted accusations of collusion between the two agencies for conspiring to persecute conservatives.

Editorials: A New Danger to Campaign Law | New York Times

Republican operatives are charging forward with their efforts to sabotage the Federal Election Commission in its lawful obligation to police campaign abuses. The six-member commission is evenly divided between the two parties, but the Republican vice chairman, Donald McGahn, has spent his tenure as a partisan obstructionist, adroitly engineering 3-to-3 standoff votes to block penalties and other recommendations by staff investigators who uncover abuses by big-money campaigners. Now Mr. McGahn aims to take advantage of a temporary Democratic vacancy and 3-to-2 Republican edge to push through rules that would make total lackeys of commission staff members by blocking them from the usual sharing of information with the Justice Department and other agencies. In his partisan cunning, Mr. McGahn would even bar them from looking into possible violations publicly reported in news media and on the Internet.

Editorials: Burning the house to roast the pig: Can elections be saved by banning political speech? | SCOTUSblog

The central paradox of most campaign finance reform measures is that they are premised on the odd notion that political speech is far too important to be free. That paradox presents itself to the Justices yet again in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission as they prepare to rule on another First Amendment challenge to a campaign finance restriction on political spending. Of course, the proponents of such regulations rarely frame the issue that way.  Rather, they generally argue that the First Amendment was never intended to allow unfettered political participation in the form of campaign contributions or expenditures and that the activity they seek to regulate is not really protected expression. They also argue that the subjects of their intended regulation are not entitled to constitutional privileges. This has generated two great bumper sticker themes that have dominated the “tastes great-less filling” shouting match over political campaign regulation since Buckley v. Valeo (1976), and Citizens United v. FEC (2010):  (1) Is money speech?, and (2)  Are corporations people?  These aren’t the actual legal questions at issue of course, but are merely the caricatures of the underlying questions as translated in the political realm.

National: FEC chair requests probe of agency’s ties with IRS | Washington Post

The Federal Election Commission’s lead member has called for an inspector general’s review to help determine whether the FEC coordinated with the Internal Revenue Service in targeting groups based on their political beliefs. FEC chairman Ellen L. Weintraub said her decision came in response to a request last week from Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), the head of the House Administration Committee, who asked the agency to hand over all of its communications with the IRS since 2008. Reps. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Charles Boustany (D-La.) made a similar request to acting IRS chief Daniel Werfel after publishing e-mails showing that Lois Lerner, the embattled former head of the agency’s exempt-organizations division, acknowledged possibly telling an FEC lawyer that a group did not appear on a publicly available list of tax-exempt groups. Federal law prohibits the IRS from releasing information about organizations that have been denied, but it can publish information about approved groups.

Editorials: A full commission should address FEC rules changes | The Washington Post

Dysfunction and conflict continue to roil the Federal Election Commission (FEC), where Republican commissioners hope to exploit their short-term majority and pass wrongheaded changes to the agency’s rules. This summer, Vice Chairman Donald F. McGhan and two other Republican commissioners proposed barring the FEC’s general counsel, when judging whether to pursue an enforcement matter, from consulting publicly available information without commission approval. This would prohibit the FEC staff from using Google, Facebook or a newspaper to look into a possible violation of campaign finance laws without prior approval. The proposal would also limit the FEC’s ability to share information with the Justice Department.

National: GOP lawmaker chides FEC for two-year delay in creating enforcement manual | Washington Post

The House Administration committee’s top Republican last week scolded the Federal Election Commission for failing to approve an enforcement manual two years after lawmakers asked the panel to complete the task. “When a federal agency keeps its enforcement policies and procedures secret or makes them difficult to understand, it increases the opportunity for abuse by its employees — abuse that has very real consequences for the Americans subject to its power,” Committee Chairman Candice Miller (Mich.) said in a statement on Friday. In a letter to Miller on Thursday, FEC Chairman Ellen Weintraub raised concerns about dealing with enforcement guidelines while the Senate is considering two new nominees for the commission.

National: FEC rules that married gay couples have same rights as straight spouses | Washington Post

The Federal Election Commission said Thursday that legally married gay couples must be treated in the same manner as opposite-sex couples under election law, reversing its previous position in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling last month that struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act. In light of the court’s decision, the election commission said that same-sex spouses can now make a single campaign contribution from a joint bank account if only one spouse has earned the income, as opposite-sex spouses are permitted to do. The commissioners also concluded that gay federal candidates who are legally married can use assets they jointly own with their spouses in their campaigns, and that same-sex spouses are considered family members of gay candidates for purposes of campaign finance rules.

National: Two FEC Nominees Receive Senate Hearing With Little Partisan Rancor | Huffington Post

Two nominees to the Federal Election Commission testified before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee on Wednesday in a short hearing that featured legalistic euphemisms and the invocation of “balls and strikes,” but little partisan rancor. Ann Ravel, a Democrat and chair of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, and Lee Goodman, a Republican election lawyer, both assured the committee that, if confirmed, they would enforce election and campaign finance laws on the books and seek to improve transparency by updating the FEC’s website. “I’m committed to enforcement of the act,” Goodman said. “I will not call balls and strikes differently for each party.” Ravel, noting the democratic principles her parents had instilled in her, said, “An important aspect of this job is to ensure that people participate in politics.”

Editorials: Sabotaging the FEC | Los Angeles Times

Not content to be merely ineffectual while they’re in office, the three Republicans on the Federal Election Commission are now trying to inhibit the agency from enforcing campaign finance laws after they leave. Ordinarily, they wouldn’t have the power to impose their ideological agenda, but a vacancy on the Democratic side of the panel gives them a temporary majority. Using it to push through the changes they’ve proposed would be a cynical move giving candidates and special interests even more freedom to thumb their noses at campaign finance law. The 1974 statute that created the FEC takes pains to keep the commission from becoming partisan, mandating that the president appoint three commissioners from each party and requiring the support of at least four commissioners to launch an investigation, sue a suspected lawbreaker or issue an advisory opinion. The four-vote requirement doesn’t apply, however, to amending the commission’s enforcement manual, which outlines how the agency launches investigations and carries out other duties. With one of the Democratic seats vacant, the three GOP commissioners are pushing for changes in the manual that would hamstring the agency’s staff and shift much of the fact-finding burden onto the people who bring complaints.

National: A Parting Shot to Neuter the Federal Election Commission | Craig Holman/Huffington Post

It’s old news that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) — the agency charged with enforcing the nation’s campaign finance laws — is moribund by ideological stalemate. But on July 25, the Commission is expected to vote on a measure that would neuter even the staff’s ability to get much done. The FEC is broken not because of its staff, a corps of professionals working hard in a futile effort to get the agency back on track. It is broken because of its management: the six commissioners (currently only five) who determine what the agency will and will not do. In an ideal world, the Commission is composed of three Democrats and three Republicans dedicated to enforcing the law who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. To ensure bipartisan fairness, official actions require a four-vote majority. In reality, the FEC is unable to do its job because a bloc of commissioners has been carefully selected to prevent four-vote decisions, thus effectively tying up the law. It is no secret that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has never met a campaign finance law he likes. While McConnell cannot convince Congress or the public to end limits and disclosure of money in politics, he has figured out that the campaign finance laws can be nullified by a hostile FEC. So McConnell selected three Republican commissioners — Don McGahn, Caroline Hunter and Matthew Petersen — who are marching in lockstep to prevent enforcement of the law.

National: FEC engulfed in power struggle over staff independence | The Washington Post

Long-standing dysfunction at the Federal Election Commission reached a new level of personal acrimony in recent weeks, fueled by a power struggle between Republican commissioners and the agency’s top lawyer, who abruptly resigned. The battle threatens to further obstruct the work of the beleaguered commission, which is charged with policing candidates’ and political groups’ compliance with disclosure rules and other requirements of the vast campaign finance system. The fight is centered on a push by the Republican commissioners to bar FEC staff members from sharing information with federal prosecutors unless the panel — currently dominated by GOP members — gives its approval. The commission’s lone Democrat and many campaign-finance experts say the move could politicize such decisions and hamper the ability of the FEC and the Justice Department to prosecute election violations.

Editorials: The Federal Election Commission’s wrong-headed proposal to change rules | The Washington Post

Immobilized by political gridlock, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has allowed its enforcement actions to nosedive in recent years. Now outgoing commission Vice Chairman Donald F. McGahn II, a former general counsel to the National Republican Congressional Committee, could be seeking to take advantage of a temporary 3-to-2 Republican majority on the FEC to write Republican stall tactics into agency rules. Mr. McGahn and other Republican commissioners have proposed a version of the FEC enforcement manual that would prevent the agency’s general counsel from consulting, without commission approval, publicly available information when considering an enforcement matter. It would also severely restrict information-sharing between the FEC and the Justice Department.

National: Federal Election Commission nominations moving forward | The Center for Public Integrity

The Senate Rules and Administration Committee will on July 24 conduct a confirmation hearing on President Barack Obama’s two new nominees to the Federal Election Commission, three government officials familiar with the proceedings tell the Center for Public Integrity. The hearing, if conducted as planned, means the nominations could move forward to the full Senate before the body recesses on August 2 for a five-week summer break. Committee members may vote to approve or reject the nominees —  Lee E. Goodman, an attorney at law firm LeClairRyan, and Ann Ravel, chairwoman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission — or forward the nominations to the full Senate without recommendation. Obama nominated Ravel and Goodman on June 21, as the Center previously reported.

National: Deadlock by design hobbles Federal Election Commission | Boston Globe

The free charter flight for Mitt Romney campaign volunteers seemed like an open-and-shut case for the six members of the Federal Election Commission. A wealthy friend of Romney spent $150,000 to fly as many as 200 campaign volunteers from Utah to a fund-raising phone-a-thon in Boston. The three Democrats on the FEC agreed with the agency’s staff that the charter appeared to violate rules limiting such “in-kind’’ gifts to $2,600 per election. But the three Republican commissioners disagreed, saying Romney’s friend merely acted “in behalf of’’ Romney’s 2008 campaign — not the illegal “on behalf of” — and thus the flight was allowed. With that twist of legal semantics, the case died — effectively dismissed. The 3-3 deadlock was part of a pattern of paralysis that has over the past five years gripped the commission, the nation’s principal referee for federal elections. The FEC has often been the subject of criticism since its founding four decades ago. But the impression of weakness has escalated dramatically, as Republicans named to the panel in 2008, united in the belief that the commission had been guilty of regulatory overreach, have moved to soften enforcement, block new rules, and limit oversight. In essence, according to critics, the FEC has been rendered toothless, and at the worst possible time, when powerful special interests are freer than they have been in decades to exert financial influence on Washington politicians.

Editorials: Sabotage at the Election Commission | New York Times

The Federal Election Commission is already in a state of wretched dysfunction, but it will only get worse if Republican members succeed in crippling the agency further when the commission meets on Thursday. The three Republicans on the commission appear ready to take advantage of a temporary vacancy on the three-member Democratic side to push through 3-to-2 votes for a wholesale retreat from existing regulations. Under their proposals, agency workers would no longer be allowed to routinely forward information about potential criminal violations by campaigners to the Justice Department, and the commission’s staff investigators would be severely hobbled in conducting preliminary inquiries. This would provide further aid and comfort to politicians and operatives who run roughshod over campaign laws.

Editorials: How President Obama Could Fix The Federal Election Commission With One Stroke Of A Pen | ThinkProgress

With the news, reported Friday by ThinkProgress, that President Obama will apparently have the power to make recess appointments over the coming week, he will have the unique opportunity to fix the Federal Election Commission (FEC). By announcing six recent appointments, he could completely remake the broken elections agency. Since April 30, the terms of every single commissioner have been expired. Five commissioners appointed by President George W. Bush are permitted to stay on indefinitely until replaced — one seat is vacant. While no more than three members of the Commission can be of either political party, all six must be appointed by the president.

National: Obama to nominate Democratic, Republican members to Federal Election Commission | The Washington Post

President Barack Obama intends to nominate two lawyers with government experience to become commissioners on the Federal Election Commission, the agency that oversees and enforces campaign finance laws. One of the nominees would fill a Democratic vacancy on the commission and the other would replace the Republican vice chairman, the White House said. Obama’s nominee to replace Republican Donald F. McGahn is Lee Goodman, who served as a top aide to former Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore of Virginia. Obama’s Democratic nominee is Ann Ravel, the chair of the California Fair Political Practices Commission. She would fill the seat vacated earlier this year by Cynthia Bauerly. If confirmed by the Senate, the FEC would have all of its six commissioners — three Democrats and three Republicans. The even partisan split on the FEC has at times contributed to gridlock on the commission with votes breaking along party lines.

Voting Blogs: The Federal Election Commission and its Choice of a General Counsel | More Soft Money Hard Law

As the combatants see it, each side in its own way, the stand-off within the Federal Election Commission is a conflict over principle and the proper reading of the law. Commissioners affiliated with the Democratic Party say they seek reasonable but vigorous enforcement; the Republican-affiliated Commissioners say they apply only the law as it is, within constitutional limits, and not as the Democrats wish it to be. The disagreements run through a host of regulatory decisions; they affect the writing of advisory opinions, the outcome of enforcement decisions, and the decisions over whether to appeal adverse court judgments. Bad feeling seems to run high. But, as one might expect, no Commissioner would concede in the slightest that partisanship or power politics accounts for the way their positions are formulated or their votes are cast. And it is always difficult when there are differences over matters of substance to be certain of the play of politics beneath the surface. It might be suspected; it is often hard to prove.

National: House Republican Lawmakers See Elections Oversight Committees as Waste of Money | IVN

The community of federal campaign oversight will undergo significant downsizing following announcements from the Federal Election Commission and the House Administration Committee, Wednesday. Tony Herman, General Legal Counsel to the Federal Election Commission, will leave the agency this July and the Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) moved one inch closer to being scrapped. In a statement, FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub said, “I want to thank Tony for his outstanding service to this agency and to the American public.” He will return to Covington & Burling, LLP where he was a partner before joining the FEC in 2011. The FEC has been understaffed since February when former commissioner, Cynthia Bauerly, left after serving nearly a 5-year term. Now with five out of six commissioners, each serving expired terms, the agency will need to locate a new General Counsel before July 7.

National: Senate Democrats demanded stricter IRS standards for tax-exempt groups | Washington Post

A group of Senate Democrats, led by Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), complained to the IRS commissioner in 2012 that political groups were improperly claiming tax-exempt status and possibly allowing donors to wrongly claim tax deductions for their contributions. The lawmakers promised legislation if the IRS failed to address the issues with specific measures, namely clarifying how much political activity is acceptable for tax-exempt groups, requiring the organizations to document how much of their work is dedicated to non-political purposes and demanding that they tell donors what percentage of their contributions can be claimed as deductions. “We urge the IRS to take these steps immediately to prevent abuse of the tax code by political groups focused on federal election activities,” the senators said.

National: Federal Election Commission revolving door spins ever so slowly | Politico.com

It’s one of the oldest traditions in Washington: Take an oversight post or a staff job on a government panel for a few years — then cash in at one of the city’s top law firms, lobbying shops or consulting outfits. But at the Federal Election Commission, the revolving door has virtually stopped moving. That’s mostly because for many qualified nominees, the post is just not worth the hassle. Unlike top regulatory or policy jobs at the Commerce Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Communications Commission and others, there’s not necessarily a lucrative job waiting at the end of their terms. Former commissioners, attorneys and outside observers say that lack of a potential career boost — or worse, losing business and clients with no guarantee of being confirmed — is one reason that’s kept potential new members on the sidelines.

Editorials: Hard truths of campaign finance | McGahn, Hunter, Petersen/Politico.com

The cries for changing the Federal Election Commission from some editorial boards and campaign finance lobbyists overlook the obvious dangers of an unchecked federal agency regulating the political involvement of citizens. When Congress created the FEC, it did not design an agency that could be wielded as a partisan weapon; instead, the agency is required to be equally divided, with, at most, three of its six members from the same party. Thus, the FEC is designed to ensure fair and impartial regulation and administration of campaign finance laws — not partisan or ideological witch hunts.

Editorials: Republican FEC Commissioners Say Keep Commission Broken | ThinkProgress

In a joint op/ed Wednesday, the three Republican members of the Federal Election Commission blasted campaign finance reformers and good-government groups for proposing changes to the impotent agency, defending themselves as “fair and impartial” regulators and administrators of campaign finance laws. But this same trio has been responsible for historic deadlock at the Commission and has openly refused to follow the campaign rules enacted by Congress. FEC Commissioners Caroline Hunter, Donald McGahn II, and Matthew Petersen, all three of whom continue to serve though their terms have expired, wrote that “The agency’s harshest critics disregard the agency’s prime enforcement directive: Enforce the law as it is, not as some wish it to be.”

Florida: Federal Election Commission Fines 3 Three For Buchanan Campaign Contributions | The Ledger

The Federal Election Commission has fined three men and two Tampa companies a total of $16,000 for illegal campaign contributions to U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Sarasota. The FEC’s case was prompted by a 2009 Tampa Bay Times story about contributions made in the name of Terry Keith Howell, a registered Democrat who was bankrupt when he gave $8,800 to Buchanan. The money actually came from Howell’s business partners in violation of a federal law that bans third-party contributions. Howell ” was concerned about the appearance of his contribution because Howell was a Democrat but was contributing to the Republicans at a time when he didn’t have any money,” according to a report by the FEC’s general counsel.

National: Campaign Contribution Limits Broken Repeatedly In 2012 Election With No FEC Oversight | Huffington Post

In October 2011, John Canning, chairman of the Chicago-based hedge fund Madison Dearborn Partners, expressed his displeasure with President Barack Obama to the Chicago Tribune. “It’s the populist economic policies of wealth redistribution and government control of all aspects of everyday life that I object to,” he said. Canning put his money where his mouth was, hosting a fundraiser for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney that fall. And Romney wasn’t the only benefactor of his largess. Over the course of the 2012 election cycle, Canning gave to as many federal candidates, political action committees (PACs) and party committees as he seemingly could find — some 38 individuals and groups, all but two of them Republican — ultimately distributing $276,000 in contributions.

National: Will the Federal Election Commission Ever Work Again? | Businessweek

Federal Election Commissioner Caroline Hunter’s term expired on April 30. This wouldn’t be newsworthy except for one thing: It means that as of now, all the members of the agency that enforces the nation’s campaign laws—and is supposed to oversee the flood of money candidates and their allies spend—are working on borrowed time. President Obama hasn’t nominated anyone to succeed them. So the current commissioners are simply lingering in their expired seats. To say the FEC is broken is a parody of understatement. The agency’s structure—three Democratic commissioners and three Republicans, serving single six-year terms—means it often deadlocks along party lines. That’s what happened when it tried to update its own regulations in the aftermath of the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, the case that helped open the door to unlimited political spending. The commission’s three Democrats wanted to consider tightening disclosure requirements; the Republicans insisted on reviewing only those rules that conflicted with the court’s ruling. That put the commissioners on the sidelines when spending by independent groups tripled to $1 billion in 2012, up from $300 million in 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks campaign spending.

National: FEC Commissioners All Serving Expired Terms Now | Huffington Post

All five sitting commissioners at the Federal Election Commission are now serving expired terms, while the sixth seat remains unfilled since a commissioner retired on Feb. 1, 2013. FEC Commissioner Caroline Hunter’s term expired on Tuesday. Until their replacements are confirmed by the Senate, FEC commissioners are permitted to stay on. Former Commissioner Cynthia Bauerly resigned her post in February long after her own term had expired. President Barack Obama has not successfully appointed a single new commissioner to the FEC. In 2010, his lone appointee withdrew during a contentious confirmation process. Obama’s failure to name commissioners has been a sore point for campaign finance reformers, who sent a blistering letter to the White House on Monday excoriating the president for not pushing hard enough to reform the nation’s system of campaign funding.

Editorials: No vote of confidence for FEC | Melanie Sloan/Politico

In light of the recent failure of gun control legislation despite widespread public support for change, most Americans would be hard-pressed to name a government entity more dysfunctional than Congress. But that is only because most people have never heard of the Federal Election Commission, which is more out of touch with common sentiment than the House and Senate combined. Voters have become cynical about elected leaders, believing many are bought and paid for. While decrying this public perception, politicians on both sides of the aisle have little interest in taking any concrete action to improve the situation.