NPR: Democrats Use FEC Lawsuit to Pressure McCain

Democrats Use FEC Lawsuit to Pressure McCain

While the candidates were trading rhetorical volleys over Sen. Barack Obama's "bitter" remarks yesterday, yet another legal front was opened in the fight over the money that pays for their campaigns.

The Democratic National Committee sued the Federal Election Commission. The lawsuit accuses the commission, saying it's failed in its obligation to investigate Republican John McCain's campaign finances. It's another consequence of the FEC's being non-functional in the midst of the biggest fundraising season in history, unable to act because it lacks the necessary number of commissioners.

The Democrats' lawsuit has a couple of angles to it. One is legal and technical. (More on that below.) The other is political. The Democrats want to generate stories like this one. They want to remind voters of questions about McCain's campaign finance troubles, while Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama go on wrangling over the Democratic nomination.

"I think this lawsuit is in large part designed to keep this issue before the public," says Tony Corrado, a political scientist at Colby College, and a specialist in campaign finance law. "The Democrats are trying to keep the pressure on John McCain because they want to keep making the case that he has somehow violated the law."

So here's the legal/technical part of the case.

Democrats say McCain has violated campaign finance law, and he's getting away with it, because the enforcement agency, the Federal Election Commission, hasn't been able to function. The commission needs 4 commissioners to decide anything and it only has 2, thanks to a standoff between Senate Democrats and the White House over confirmation of three nominees.

McCain's lawyers say his alleged violation is no violation at all. Here's what happened:

When McCain's campaign was about to go broke over the winter, he got a line of credit from a bank. He had already applied for public financing. But when his fundraising got better, McCain declared that he was withdrawing from the public financing program. The DNC lawsuit says he can't do that -- because he had already made financial use of his access to public funds. The Democrats point out that McCain's campaign manager guaranteed... to the bank ... that McCain could qualify for public money in the future.

"We think any fair and objective look at the facts would show that no bank at arm's length would make a loan to the McCain campaign in the situation it was in, unless they knew that when push came to shove, they could rely on getting the taxpayer money to help repay the loan," says DNC general counsel Joseph Sandler .

The kicker here is that if McCain is still in the public financing program, he has not received a dime yet from the program, but at the same time he has broken the spending cap that goes along with the access to public money.

But this is not the first time the Democrats have taken notice of this situation. The DNC filed a complaint about it in February. Under federal election law it can sue the election commission for failing to act. The new lawsuit argues that having no functioning commission is the legal equivalent.

The Republican National Committee called the suit "total nonsense" ... something concocted by "trial-lawyer Democrats."

Meanwhile, as if to emphasize the plight of the F-E-C, former chairman Robert Lenhard has asked that the White House withdraw his name from nomination for one of those empty seats on the commission. While he was waiting to be confirmed he was hired by one of Washington's top law firms.

Corrado, the political scientist, said that's a bad sign.

"Not only do we have a dysfunctional F-E-C at this point, but it is going to be increasingly difficult at this point to find individuals who are going to be willing serve on the commission."

Consider that Lenhard, a Democrat, has already served two years as a recess appointee, without Senate approval. His nomination and two others have been pending in the Senate since December 2005.

FEC watchers say that if the stalemate isn't broken before the Senate's July recess, the commission will be out of business for the rest of this election year.

-- Peter Overby

2:20 PM ET | 04-15-2008 | permalink

Comments

Oooh, nothing gets people more exited than the byzantine intricacies of campaign finance laws. It's like being at math camp!

Anyways, it's a shame that the frauds at Pew had to foist upon us the false boogeyman of campaign finance in the first place. The end result is that it is pretty much impossible for anyone but very wealthy people to run for office.

http://www.democracy-project.com/archives/001449.html
"The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot ??? that everywhere they looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform. Over seven years, I spent about $30 million of Pew money on this effort. "

Sent by deek | 3:21 PM ET | 04-15-2008

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