Cronies At The FEC
*Cross-posted at TomPaine.com
Last night, with lobbyist Jack Abramoff having
entered his second guilty plea in as many days, was a moment begging
for integrity in government. Instead, Congress and the White House
colluded to deny the American people a public confirmation process for
the individuals charged with regulating federal elections. Their action
was shameless and straightforward: they used the president’s recess
appointment power to sneak through a slate of politically cozy Federal
Election Commissioners who will further weaken the already toothless
FEC.
The indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay; the
metastasizing investigation into the web-spinning of lobbyist Jack
Abramoff; and the revelation that Representative Randy “Duke”
Cunningham accepted over $2.4 million in bribes from a defense
contractor all tended in favor of strengthening the FEC—not weakening
it. But weaken is exactly what Congress and the White House did, and
they did it without a public hearing.
The FEC has six commissioners appointed by the president and
confirmed by the Senate, with no more than three members to be
affiliated with a single political party. Although only one position
was actually empty, four of the six seats on the commission were
technically vacant, with commissioners serving despite expired terms.
Thus, President Bush had a unique opportunity to appoint a full
two-thirds of the commission. Suddenly urgent, however, the opportunity
was not. In fact, the circumstances have existed since August. But
because few things unite Republicans and Democrats like incumbency, the
last four months produced not even a single appointment until last
night when President Bush announced the recess appointments of three
individuals: Robert Lenhard, Steven Walther and Hans von
Spakovsky. Though unstated by the White House, the implication is that
current GOP Commissioner David Mason will remain as an acting
commissioner indefinitely.
The announcement of recess appointments ignored a request by the
bipartisan sponsors of the nation’s principal federal campaign finance
law. Recently, Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russell Feingold,
D-Wi., and Representatives Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Marty
Meehan, D-Mass., sent President Bush a letter urging him not to fill
FEC vacancies via recess appointments. Just as importantly, the letter
recommended that the president seize the “rare opportunity to change
the makeup of the ineffective FEC” by nominating individuals who are
“professionally qualified, independent-minded, and publicly credible.”
In Washington such advice is heresy. Not surprisingly, it was treated
accordingly.
Just as former FEMA Director Michael Brown was longer on connections
than qualifications, so too are the recess appointees. As if to
underscore Washington’s current culture of corruption, one of the
Republican appointees, Hans von Spakovsky, played a critical role in
upholding DeLay’s controversial Texas redistricting plan. Along with
other Bush appointees at the Department of Justice, Von Spakovsky
overruled the unanimous opinions of DOJ’s staff attorneys who concluded
that the plan violated the Voting Rights Act. Von Spakovsky will feel
right at home as an FEC commissioner since, at DOJ, he was largely
responsible for undermining the very civil rights laws he was employed
to enforce.
Rest assured, however, that the dynamic is deeply
bipartisan. President Bush accepted Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s
recommendations of Reno lawyer Steven Walther and labor lawyer Robert
Lenhard to fill the Democratic posts. Walther, who served as an
attorney for Reid in 1998, has no experience in campaign finance law.
More troublesome is Lenhard, who is on record as opposing the
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). Lenhard worked as counsel with
one of the many labor organizations that unsuccessfully challenged the
constitutionality of BCRA in the courts. While not certain, it appears
Sen. Reid thus acted covertly to undercut a popular law that—when the
nation’s attention was trained on it—he helped to pass. The whole point
is that the public was cheated of the opportunity to know. Yesterday in
Washington was not a time for politicians to be offering their usual
“trust me” bromides.
Questions of federal election law are complex and important. The FEC
requires qualified, committed commissioners, not cronies who place
politics ahead of principle. In the context of election laws, the
“sides” are not limited to party leaders; they include the voters who
elected those leaders in the first place. Under the circumstances, and
in light of months of inaction, the recess appointments manifest a
bipartisan cabal of cowardice and corruption.
Even the most attention-hungry politicians hide in the shadows when
working to undermine laws regulating their own behavior. In such
situations the glare of public scrutiny serves the people, not
self-interested politicians. To be sure, recess appointments are
appropriate—even necessary—for certain offices at certain times. But
the Federal Election Commission is not one of those offices. And
yesterday was absolutely not one of those times.
