As some at the Federal Election Commission seek to broaden the power of the agency, critics are arguing that it's beginning to look increasingly like the Internal Revenue Service under Lois Lerner, who has been accused of using her office for partisan purposes.
They take special aim at the commission's Democratic chairwoman, Ann Ravel, who also served as chairwoman of California's equivalent to the FEC, the Fair Political Practices Commission, before coming to Washington in 2013. Ravel has lambasted the commission as "dysfunctional" because votes on enforcement issues have often resulted in ties, and she has said the commission should go beyond its role of enforcing election laws by doing more to get women and minorities elected to political office. She has complained that super PACs are "95 percent run by white men," and that as a result, "the people who get the money are generally also white men."
To remedy those problems, Ravel sponsored a forum at the FEC in June to talk about getting more women involved in the political process. She has also proposed broadening disclosure laws to diminish the role of outside spending, and suggested that the FEC should claim authority to regulate political content on the Web. She's also voiced support for eliminating one member of the commission in order to create a partisan majority that doesn't have tie votes, saying in an interview with Roll Call, "I think it would help."
Hans von Spakovsky, who served on the FEC from 2006-2008, takes issue with Ravel's effort to go beyond the traditional purview of the commission's functions. "The FEC has one duty, and one duty only — to enforce the existing campaign finance laws. It has no business trying to 'encourage' or 'discourage' folks to get involved in politics, no matter who they are, minority or otherwise," Spakovsky told theWashington Examiner.
Spakovsky also said it would be contrary to the function of the FEC to limit the number of commissioners. "The fact that any action by the FEC requires the votes of four commissioners, and thus bipartisan agreement, ensures that its investigations are based on enforcing the law evenly, without regard to the party a particular candidate is a member of. Ravel wants to end that, which would allow the FEC to be used for partisan political witch hunts," Spakovsky said.
Ravel did not respond to a request for comment.
The votes on which the commission ties often pertain to alleged violations by the third-party groups known as super political action committees. Super PACs have no contribution limit and no spending limit as long as they do not "coordinate" with the candidates for whom they are spending. The FEC defines this as "payment made in cooperation with, at the suggestion of, or per an understanding with a candidate." Critics of those groups say they often circumvent the law by straddling the definition of coordination.
Ravel co-signed a letter with fellow Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub in June, saying the spending that those groups engage in on behalf of candidates should count toward the spending limit for those candidates. "There is this basic notion that super PACs are supposed to be separate from the candidates," Weintraub has said. "[Voters] look at what's going on, and they say: 'This doesn't look separate. Where are the lines?'"
The Wall Street Journal's editorial board has compared Ravel to the IRS' Lerner, who's also been accused of using her office to push a political agenda. "We'll take our chances with donations freely given than with the arbitrary and partisan rulings of Lois Lerner at the IRS or Ann Ravel at the Federal Election Commission," the editorial board wrote.
