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Caroline Hunter's departure leaves the campaign finance regulator without a quorum until her would-be successor, Allen Dickerson, is confirmed.
FEC will be in limbo again after just 29 days of minimal life
Jun 26 2020
UPDATES with President Trump's nominee for the new vacancy.
The Federal Election Commission will be totally toothless once again.
Commissioner Caroline Hunter announced Friday that she's resigning at the end of next week, leaving the panel with just three members and therefore no quorum.
Her departure will come just 29 days after the arrival of fellow Republican Trey Trainor, a Texas campaign finance attorney. His party-line confirmation by the Senate in May restored a quorum to the commission for the first time in more than nine months — the longest period in the 45-year history of the agency charged with regulating donations to and spending by campaigns.
<p>The resignation took her fellow commissioners by surprise, but not the White House. Hours later, President Trump said he was nominating Allen Dickerson, who's now legal director at the Institute for Free Speech, a conservative nonprofit devoted to campaign finance deregulation.</p><p>In her <a href="https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000172-f13e-d49c-a57a-ffffb1430000" target="_blank">resignation letter</a>, Hunter said it was time for the agency to benefit from "new faces and fresh perspectives." But she urged Trump to choose a successor committed, as she has been, to protecting the First Amendment right of contributors to make unlimited and unregulated donations.</p><p>That is precisely what Dickerson's career has been about. And, in the decade since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision expanded its money-is-free-speech rationale — allowing businesses and unions as well as individuals to give as much as they like — Hunter often opposed efforts at the agency to set structure and boundaries around the flow of campaign cash.</p><p>It was not immediately clear how quickly Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, an ardent campaign finance deregulator, would arrange for Senate confirmation — or how hard the Democrats would work to delay if not prevent it.</p><p>The Senate's schedule is limited between now and the election, and Democrats will surely oppose any nominee who is not paired with someone they approve of.</p><p>Presidents have traditionally forwarded nominees for the commission in bipartisan pairs, but Trump has now put forward two Republicans in a row. Democratic senators have pushed for the president to also nominate FEC attorney Shana Broussard, who would be the commission's first Black member.</p><p>In the meantime, a return to limbo means the commission cannot address more than 300 cases pending on its enforcement docket — or any new ones brought against presidential or congressional candidates or the organizations hoping to steer money in their direction during the next four months.</p><p>Although the panel is largely deadlocked even when there is a quorum, because no party can hold more than half the seats and four votes are required for action, the result for the time being is a nearly totally hands off regulatory approach to the flow of several billions of dollars in political money.</p><p>The FEC will not even be able to conduct routine audits of federal candidate fundraising and spending, work that usually proceeds even when the commissioners are in partisan paralysis.</p><p>Last week the commission held its first meeting since August, but nothing controversial was on the agenda and no substantive decisions were made. No meetings can be held unless there's a quorum.</p><p>Hunter had been on the commission since 2008 and her term had expired six years ago, but the law had allowed her to stay on.</p><p>In her letter, Hunter also called out — although not by name — her Democratic panel colleague Ellen Weintraub, with whom she often butted heads.</p><p>"One commissioner — who has served for more than a decade past the expiration of her term — routinely mischaracterizes disagreements among commissioners about the law as 'dysfunction,' rather than a natural consequence of the FEC's unique structure, misrepresents the jurisdiction of the agency and deliberately enables outside groups to usurp the Commission's role in litigation and chill protected speech," she wrote. "The American people deserve better."</p><p>In response to the resignation, Weintraub said, "It's keenly disappointing for the FEC to lose its quorum in just a blink of an eye after we regained it. But of course I wish Caroline well in this and all her future endeavors."</p><p>Good-government groups had largely opposed Trainor's confirmation because of his deregulatory approach, but they were also critical of the long period of inertia at the agency.</p><p>"It is deeply disheartening and concerning that the FEC will again be missing in action," said Meredith McGehee of the democracy reform advocacy group Issue One. (It operates but is journalistically independent of The Fulcrum.) "The American people need a watchdog devoted to enforcing the anti-corruption laws on the books and ensuring transparency of the billions of dollars being spent to influence their votes."</p><p>Hunter is joining the legal team of Stand Together, a criminal justice reform nonprofit founded by the long-prominent conservative political financier Charles Koch.</p><p>Before joining the FEC she was a member of the Election Assistance Commission after working as a lawyer in the George W. Bush White House and for the Republican National Committee.</p>
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Three years after being nominated to the FEC, Republican Trey Trainor was finally confirmed by the Senate last month.
FEC begins new chapter with Trainor at the helm
Jun 18 2020
The Federal Election Commission is back in business with a restored quorum and Republican Trey Trainor at the helm. Now all it needs is unanimity among its partisan commissioners.
Trainor was named chairman during the agency's public meeting on Thursday — its first since August 2019. Each commissioner is only intended to serve as chairman once during their six-year term, and since the other three members have already done so multiple times, the role went to Trainor.
His addition to the agency has not been without criticism. Since Trainor was first nominated to the FEC by President Trump in 2017, Democrats and good-government groups have been opposed to his confirmation due to his deregulatory approach to campaign finance laws.
<p>"I don't know if that's a blessing or a curse to be the new guy and then be responsible," Trainor said after he was named chairman Thursday.</p>
<p>Over the 262-day period without a quorum, cases piled up on the FEC's docket. At the end of March, <a href="https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/status_of_enforcement_2nd_qtr_2020_final_redacted.pdf" target="_blank">the agency reported</a> it had 333 cases pending. Of those, 160 are awaiting a vote from the commission and 90 are approaching the five-year statute of limitations.</p>
<p>But good-government groups have raised concerns about the FEC's ability to get through this huge backlog of cases due to the likelihood of partisan deadlocks. With only four commissioners, unanimous agreement will be required to do anything of consequence. And the addition of Trainor once again creates a partisan split, as he will likely side with fellow conservative Caroline Hunter.</p>
<p>Before joining the FEC, Trainor <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/campaign-finance/trey-trainor-fec" target="_self">worked as an attorney in Texas</a>. He also worked for Trump's 2016 campaign and the Texas Republican Party. When serving as the lawyer for a conservative lobbying group, he fought the Texas Ethics Commission over donor disclosure requirements.</p>
<p>Trainor's nomination to the FEC was in limbo for three years until the Senate <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/campaign-finance/senate-confirms-trainor-fec" target="_self">finally confirmed him</a> on May 19. While his nomination was pending, Commissioner Matthew Petersen resigned, leaving the FEC one member short of a quorum and <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/what-the-fec-can-but-mostly-cannot-do-with-only-three-regulators-on-the-job" target="_self">unable to carry out </a>its watchdog duties.</p>
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Caroline Brehman/Getty Images
A party-line vote in the Republican Senate put conservative Texas attorney Trey Trainor on the Federal Election Commission.
Campaign watchdog agency can reopen — but has no new ability to function
May 20 2020
After 262 days in limbo, the Federal Election Commission can operate again. But a toxic mix of partisanship and the agency's own rules provides little hope the campaign finance regulator will soon function.
The doors can symbolically reopen because the Senate voted Tuesday, 49-43 along party lines, to confirm conservative Texas attorney Trey Trainor as a commissioner — ending the longest period ever when the panel lacked the four-person quorum required to conduct business.
But it also takes four votes to do anything consequential. And the even partisan split Trainor creates means the FEC is returning to its life for the past decade — at an impasse on almost every question about enforcing the limited laws of money in politics. The persistent deadlock is one of the main reasons the campaign finance system is derided by critics as out of control.
<p>Democrats and good-government groups have opposed Trainor's nomination for three years, and their frustration only grew after the FEC closed up shop in September.</p>
<p>At a time when another wave of aggressive and secretive fundraising by advocacy groups and candidates was starting to ramp up — and unlimited spending by corporate and foreign interests to influence presidential and congressional contests was starting to break records again — a fully functioning FEC is imperative, they say. But they lambasted Trainor's <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/campaign-finance/trey-trainor-fec" target="_self">deregulatory approach</a> to money in politics, made clear from his time as a lawyer for President Trump's 2016 campaign and the Texas GOP, as antithetical to the FEC's mission.</p>
<p>And they were further miffed that Trump has nominated only Trainor, breaking the longstanding practice of proposing new commissioners in bipartisan pairs. The president has ignored the request of Democratic leaders to also nominate Shana Broussard, a senior FEC attorney who would be the first person of color in the 45-year history of the commission.</p>
<p>The president could name five more nominees, not only to fill two open seats but also to replace the three existing commissioners. All are serving long past the expirations of their terms, which the law allows.</p>
<p>By dropping the bipartisan nominating custom, the Senate "ends up allowing unqualified nominees who hold extreme views to be appointed to important positions," Amy Klobuchar said during the only speech on the Senate floor before Tuesday's vote.</p>
<p>The Minnesota senator, who's the top Democrat on the committee with jurisdiction over election policy, blasted Trainor for his hands-off view toward campaign finance law.</p>
<p>"The absolute minimum qualification should be that the person actually believes in the mission of the agency," she said. "Is that too much to ask?"</p>
<p>As a lawyer for the conservative lobbying group Empower Texans, for example, Trainor fought the state Ethics Commission over donor disclosure requirements — offering the novel argument that unmasking the identities of campaign benefactors could distract voters from the content of political messages.</p>
<p>Such a belief in donor anonymity was one of many reasons that Trainor was opposed by the entire community of groups that advocate for tighter campaign finance regulations, including the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, End Citizens United and Issue One.</p>
<p>"Why would someone who has gone on the record as being adamantly opposed to the responsibilities of an agency get nominated to serve as a commissioner of that agency?" CLC President Trevor Potter, a former FEC member, asked in an <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/10/1926112/-Nominee-to-Election-Watchdog-Would-Perpetuate-Dysfunction-at-Agency" target="_blank">opinion piece for Daily Kos</a>. "The cynical, but obvious answer is: to render the agency toothless."</p>
<p>For the last eight months, the agency has been unable to hold hearings, advise campaigns about how to follow the law, start new investigations, close pending cases or issue penalties. Its main function has been to keep the mailroom open to accept and file away candidates' periodic reports about their fundraising and spending.</p>
<p>The agency has the power to police limits on campaign contributions and investigate potential illegal spending by candidates and out-of-bounds donations from foreigners — but for now it is powerless, even if there were unanimous agreement, to curb the flow of so-called dark money.</p>
<p>Watchdog groups have been circumventing the rudderless FEC by pursuing campaign finance violations in federal court. The law that created the agency permits civil lawsuits against money-in-politics miscreants if the commission doesn't act on complaints in a timely manner — and without a quorum, the FEC couldn't act at all.</p>
<p>With Trainor installed, such a work-around will only be possible if a commissioner decides to walk away from a case in order to create the sort of stall that allows federal courts to intervene. Democrat Ellen Weintraub is the only commissioner who has ever done so, but only in a single case where she decided to "<a href="https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2018-04-19-ELW-statement.pdf" target="_blank">break the glass</a>" to go after a group that spent millions on political ads without disclosing its donors.</p>
<p>The commissioners face a mountain of backlogged work. At the end of March, <a href="https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/status_of_enforcement_2nd_qtr_2020_final_redacted.pdf" target="_blank">the last time the agency took note</a>, 333 cases were pending — meaning the docket had grown 22 percent in the seven months after the de facto shutdown began when Trainor's predecessor Matthew Petersen resigned effective Sept. 1.</p>
<p>Of those cases on the docket, at least 166 are awaiting a vote from the commission and 90 have been pending so long they are about to be dismissed because the five-year statute of limitations will have expired.</p>
<p>Few are expecting the commission will be able to clear the decks, because Trainor is very likely to vote with his new conservative colleague, Chairwoman Caroline Hunter, negating the more assertive enforcement approaches of Weintraub and Steven Walther.</p>
<p>"Despite regaining a quorum, the FEC will likely stay hopelessly broken as an enforcer of our nation's election laws," said Meredith McGehee of Issue One. (The organization incubates but is journalistically independent of The Fulcrum.)</p>
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Former Common Cause President Ann McBride Norton
First woman to run Common Cause, back when political reform was bipartisan, has died
May 11 2020
Ann McBride Norton, who was among the earliest Republican volunteers and later the first female president of Common Cause, one of the nation's original and most influential democracy reform groups, has died.
Her death, at her home in Washington on Wednesday at age 75, was caused by complications from Alzheimer's disease, according to a daughter, the pop rock musician Mary McBride.
She was known as Ann McBride during her 27-run at Common Cause, which ended in 1999 after four years in the top job as successor to the organization's longtime third president, the legendary good governance impresario Fred Wertheimer.
<p>"Ann was one of a kind who used her keen intellect, public interest commitment and Southern charm to help the cause of good government," said Meredith McGehee, a protege who's now top lobbyist for the cross-partisan political reform group <a data-linked-post="2638675064" href="https://thefulcrum.us/issue-one" target="_blank">Issue One</a> (which is incubating, but journalistically insulated from, The Fulcrum).</p><p>When McBride started volunteering part-time in 1972, Common Cause was shifting from its original purpose of opposing the Vietnam War — positioning itself to instead become one of the only advocacy groups in Washington focused on fixing democracy's ills. </p><p>Even during Watergate, those challenges seemed far less dramatic than the deep-pocketed partisan polarization paralyzing the system now. And, unlike today, such causes as bolstering government ethics, easing access to the ballot box, combating <a data-linked-post="2636688309" href="https://thefulcrum.us/gerrymandering" target="_blank">gerrymandering</a> and curbing money's sway over politicians and their policies drew plenty of support from GOP officials and philanthropists along with Democrats.</p><p>After helping engineer ratification of the 26th Amendment, with the hope of spurring a surge in civic engagement by giving 18-year-olds the right to vote, Common Cause turned its focus mainly toward the issue that's been its premier calling card since — revamping the campaign finance system. </p><p>But after an initial burst of success in the 1970s, when it won expanded powers for the <a data-linked-post="2636227612" href="https://thefulcrum.us/fec" target="_blank">Federal Election Commission</a> and the creation of voluntary taxpayer subsidies of presidential campaigns, the group's efforts remained only marginally successful for two decades. Its long quest for another overhaul of campaign finance laws was three years from fruition when McBride stepped down.</p><p>By that point, the rolls of Common Cause's dues-paying members had swelled to more than 250,000 and its reputation as a nonpareil grassroots lobbying force was set — although, thanks to the hardened partisan split over campaign finance rules, the group became known and remains viewed as reliably left-leaning.</p><p>As chief chief lobbyist on Capitol Hill and then president, McBride said her guide for steering Common Cause was a version of the mantra of the famous community organizer Saul Alinsky. His version — "No permanent enemies, no permanent allies, only permanent interests" — was rendered by her as "A key opponent in one case may become your prime supporter in another."</p><p>To that end, she recruited John McCain to be the Republican face of campaign finance reform in the early 1990s — right after the Arizona senator said he had emerged chastened from the "Keating Five" scandal, when he was found to have improperly intervened with federal banking regulators on behalf of a big donor.</p><p>The bill <a data-linked-post="2636694711" href="https://thefulcrum.us/mccain-feingold" target="_blank">McCain shepherded</a> finally became law in 2002. But by that time, McBride and her second husband, the environmental activist Edward M. Norton, had moved to southwestern China, where for many years they worked to preserve indigenous cultures in the most remote corners of Asia. (Survivors include a stepson, the actor and director Ed Norton.) </p><p>It was a radically different second career for a woman who had grown up the Cajun country of southwestern Louisiana, where her father was in the oil leasing business and chairman of the state Republican Party.</p><p>Ann deGravelles dropped out of college and married her college sweetheart, Charles McBride, following him to Washington where he worked for two of the state's Democratic senators, Russell Long and Bennett Johnston.</p><p>Soon after she started working full time for Common Cause, he became top staffer for the party committee that recruits and raises money for Senate candidates — an early example of one of Washington's rarest species, the power couple working on opposite sides of the same issue.</p><p>McBride had a quip at the ready when asked how they reconciled their situation: "It's easy. Charlie shakes them down, and I shake them up."</p>
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