John McCain and Russ Feingold are together again, joining forces this morning to place a “hold” on John Sullivan, a nominee to the Federal Election Commission. The Senators claim that they have no beef with Sullivan. Rather, they are angry that the FEC just isn’t behaving the way they want it to, and so they’re holding onto Sullivan until the President replaces some other FEC commissioners with people more to their liking. It’s a bit as if the Senators were to announce that they won’t vote to seat Judge Sotomayor on the Supreme Court unless Scalia and Alito are replaced, too.
CCP’s release on this development is here.
Senators, of course, have a right and a duty to advise and consent on a president’s nominees, they have a right to withhold their vote, and they have a right to voice their opinion about how any agency should be run. Still, the idea of holding up one nominee until the President replaces other people in government is a bit extreme, and the type of thing that tends to give Washington a bad name. It even leads some people to conclude that the government is “corrupt,” in that imprecise way in which the term is so often thrown around these days.
Although they don’t specifically say so, the apparent target of the dynamic duo of reform is Don McGahn, a Republican who has been remarkably successful in leading efforts to alter various FEC enforcement policies and interpretations. Simply put, McGahn is too good a Commissioner for McCain and Feingold — he is actually effective, which would be fine if he towed the line, but since he doesn’t do the latter, they’ve decided he must go. And when Fred Wertheimer (pictured here, between two unidentified Senators) talks, the Senators jump. As usual, the Senators’ statement is full of platitudes and banalities about how the FEC won’t enforce the law, blah blah blah. The Senators studiously avoid discussing actual policies and cases at the FEC, as that might make their case a bit harder.
Let’s focus on just one case for which McGahn has drawn some heat, MUR 5957 involving one Arjinderpal Sekhon, a would be congressman from California. Sekhon, a Democrat and a first time candidate in 2006, raised less than $200,000 for his congressional campaign, well below the amount a first time candidate needs to be successful. He eventually got about 32% against an 11 term Republican incumbent. The campaign failed to include occupational and/or employment information for 219 of its 245 donors (under the law, it is not required to provide that information, but must make “best efforts” to get it). For many, the campaign listed “self” as both the occupation and employer, which sounds a bit goofy until you realize that its treasurer, a family member, was inexperienced, and that many of the donors were physicians (the candidate being a physician himself). The case was generated internally — that is, no complaint was ever filed against Sekhon by his opponent or anyone else. As a result, Sekhon had no opportunity to respond to the charge until after the Commission had found “reason to believe” that a violation had occured. There’s more, but you get the picture. Ultimately, the Republican commissioners refused to impose a fine on Dr. Sekhon for these errors. This is a question of judgment, not partisanship or rank ideology, as high profile Democratic campaign finance attorney Joe Sandler noted in defending the Republican Commissioners actions in this case.
It would be interesting to see Senators McCain and Feingold stand before a microphone and explain why the public interest demands that Dr. Sekhon, an army reservist,* should be fined (the family member who served as his treasurer could be personally liabile for any fine).Do they really think that this type of judgment by Commissioner McGahn and his colleagues is so beyond the pale that it warrants not merely opposition to McGahn, but opposition to seating another candidate from the opposite political party, until the President replaces McGahn with a Republican more to McCain and Feingold’s liking?
We would love to see that moment, not that we expect to. But we’re confident that if the Senators actually had to defend their actions in terms of actual FEC cases of Dr. Sekhon and others, their case would quickly crumble.
If this is the case they’ve got against McGahn, the Senators ought to move on and focus on the serious business in Washington — monumental bills on climate change, health system reform and more — or maybe just take a hike.
* We are under no illusions that Dr. Sekhon is a saint — he was recently indicted for bankruptcy fraud. We also don’t understand the First Amendment to apply only to saints.
