Conservative legal experts charged Monday that Democrats are scheming to take control of the Federal Election Commission in order to create a regime at the agency that could improperly target conservatives, and say one of the current Democratic commissioners is already trying to lead the charge.
“They want to take it back to the days when they loved it, when the GOP commissioners were essentially docile and at least one could always be counted on to vote with the Democratic commissioners to give the Democrats whatever they wanted, and when the agency employed people like [former IRS nonprofit head] Lois Lerner,” Cleta Mitchell, a Republican attorney who specializes in campaign finance law, told the Washington Examiner on Monday.
Conservatives are worried that proposals from Senate Democrats amount to a growing effort to fundamentally transform the agency. One of those came in March, when Democratic New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall proposed legislation to completely kill the agency and replace it with a more partisan version that, he suggested, would be less divided.
“Gridlock leaves the agency powerless to enforce the few campaign finance laws remaining on the books,” Udall said. “We need a new agency empowered to ensure our elections are fair and democratic.”
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Efforts to reform the agency were given new life again last week, when Senate Democrats rolled out a package of proposals that would tighten disclosure laws and ban former members of Congress from registering as lobbyists. Among other things, that package would require all federal candidates to report contributions of $1,000 or more to the FEC within 48 hours.
The move to make the agency an election-year issue seems to have been inspired largely by Democratic FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel, who last year filled the agency’s rotating chairmanship and who criticized her colleagues with unusual intensity. Ravel’s frustration culminated with a call in January for the other commissioners to quit, arguing it was “absurd” to say “the FEC was intended to stalemate.”
Conservatives charge Ravel is politicizing the agency. White House visitor logs made public last month revealed that Ravel visited the White House at nearly the same time, first on Jan. 20 and again on Jan. 28. Consequently, critics are worried about the role Ravel seems to play in proposals to renovate the commission.
Ravel, who formerly led California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, a state-level equivalent to the FEC, has been especially vocal in her frustration on two topics. One is the commission’s refusal to hit GOP groups with penalties for alleged enforcement violations.
The second is the question of whether the agency’s regulatory authority should be expanded to cover content on the Web. The agency has deadlocked several times over the last year on questions of whether to expand its regulatory power to websites like the Drudge Report and Twitter.
Hans von Spakovsky, who served as FEC commissioner under President Bush, said the change was a blatant attempt to grab power. “It would allow one political party to impose interpretations of the law and regulations that only benefit one side of the political aisle or that violate constitutional rights — like Commissioner Ravel’s heedless desire to override fundamental First Amendment rights by restricting political speech on the Internet,” said Spakovsky, who works as a manager of election law at the Heritage Foundation.
Mitchell noted that Ravel had succeeded in convincing California’s FPPC to regulate political bloggers before coming to Washington, and said a similar plan could be motivating the drive by congressional Democrats to change the FEC.
“The FPPC rides roughshod over and tramples the First Amendment rights of citizens on a regular basis,” Mitchell said, adding that the proposed changes would allow the FEC to act as “a tyrannical, overreaching agency that ignores the First Amendment rights of the American people.”
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Given significant Republican majorities in both chambers, the prospect of Democrats passing major changes through Congress this year is dim. However, the move indicates a divide between the parties that is increasingly vast on the issue of campaign finance law, and the battle to come should Democrats gain more influence.
“Requiring four of the six commissioners to approve any action, which is the current law, including investigations and the imposition of civil penalties, ensures that both parties agree that a violation of the law has occurred or that the correct policy is being implemented,” Spakovsky said. “This guarantees that the FEC is not used as political tool and that it acts to enforce the law against violators regardless of their party affiliation.
“I cannot think of a more dangerous, reckless, and downright irresponsible move than to take the FEC down from six commissioners to five,” he added. “It is an imprudent and ill-advised proposal.”
