In 2002, Kelly Clarkson won the first-ever season of American Idol. A Beautiful Mind won the Academy Award for Best Picture. A road trip required printed directions or a physical map. Americans grappled with the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which had just happened months prior.
This is what the world looked like when Ellen Weintraub was appointed to the Federal Election Commission by President George W. Bush in 2002.
Commissioner Weintraub’s term expired April 30, 2007: the year Madeleine McCann disappeared, Bob Barker hosted his final episode of The Price is Right, and Facebook and Twitter (now X) went global.
But Weintraub never left the FEC. Over 22 years after being appointed and 17 years after her term expired, Ellen Weintraub still serves as an FEC Commissioner. By statute, FEC commissioners are supposed to be limited to one six-year term. They are permitted to stay in office as “acting” commissioners until their successor is appointed.
No one ever thought, however, that “acting” could mean “over two decades.”
Thursday, December 12, Weintraub was elected as the 2025 FEC Chair, following the standard party rotation with the Vice Chair becoming the following year’s Chair. It will be her fourth time chairing the Commission.
In statements made about the election of officers during last year’s FEC open meeting, Commissioner Allen Dickerson highlighted the importance of new blood at the agency. He applauded Commissioner Shana Broussard, remarking that her “outsized contributions to the work of this agency are on full display. Regulations that laid dormant for decades under other commissioners are being passed…real bipartisan compromise has been happening over the last three years, after a long winter of recrimination, ad hominem attack, and dysfunction.”
Commissioner Weintraub herself complained repeatedly of the Commission’s dysfunction. In 2011, she reportedly said, “We were dysfunctional before the rest of Washington became dysfunctional.” But if the Commission has truly been dysfunctional all this time, the one constant has been Commissioner Weintraub.
As IFS founder and former FEC Chairman Bradley A. Smith wrote in The Hill earlier this year, new commissioners have been positive for the agency:
While Congress remains mired in gridlock, bipartisan work is getting done at the FEC. When the new commissioners arrived, the FEC had a huge backlog of unresolved complaints…But the Commission has cleared the pile of the older complaints.
The FEC also recently produced an excellent example of how it is working on a bipartisan basis when it unanimously passed updated rules that updated language and regulations related to the “internet exemption.” This internet exemption, created by the Commission over 20 years ago, has been crucial to modern political discourse. It provides that unpaid internet communications (including social media posts) by individuals or nonprofits are exempt from regulation.
Fresh blood is good for the FEC. Weintraub should step down and be replaced. The agency should burn sage and make room for fresh ideas and a new path forward.
While it’s true that all but two commissioners (former IFS Legal Director Allen Dickerson and Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum) have overstayed their terms, only one of those commissioners was appointed prior to the Iraq War.
Weintraub’s term expired before the launch of the iPhone and Android. She has been at the FEC during the rise and the fall of the Blackberry and MySpace. Commissioner Weintraub is now overstaying the six-year term limit by four times. She has served nearly 154 years in dog years. At this point, she might be fused to her chair (someone should check on her). She should be the first to go.
