The Center for Competitive Politics (CCP) criticized as "deeply dishonest" a letter sent by pro-regulation groups to the Federal Election Commission today.
"These organizations are recycling their laundry list of complaints about the FEC, which boils down to their belief that the Commission should silence political speech and ignore First Amendment concerns," said Bradley A. Smith, Chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics and a former FEC Chairman.
"This is evident in their scorn for due process rights, a phrase they can’t even bring themselves to say without putting scare quotes around the words. That they argue against such basic elements of fairness as allowing respondents’ counsel to actually appear before the Commission illustrates their extreme anti-speech ideology."
Last month, CCP joined a broad coalition of respected campaign finance lawyers, advocacy groups and others in testifying before the FEC regarding its procedures on enforcement and other matters. Commissioner Ellen Weintraub singled out CCP in particular for its extensive and constructive comments on how the agency could better enforce existing rules and regulations.
The anti-free speech groups, as they make clear in their letter to the FEC, boycotted the hearings and instead issued a hyperbolic rant criticizing the FEC for recognizing recent court rulings requiring the agency to respect the First Amendment in their rulemakings.
"This is a deeply dishonest letter," Smith said. "They made similar complaints in 2003, when the Commission last reviewed its enforcement processes and added some basic due process rights. These groups refuse to recognize that in the wake of that review FEC enforcement times declined and fines increased, demonstrating that due process and proper enforcement are not enemies. Moreover, they knowingly misrepresent the realities of the enforcement process, ignoring that over 98 percent of FEC respondents never get their cases reviewed in court, where more due process would be available."
The complaints about the failure to establish rules on coordination are particularly ironic given that the Commission has twice drafted such rules only to have these very same pro-regulation groups take them t
o court and get the proposed rules thrown out. They also neglect to mention that a major reason for ongoing delay in FEC rulemakings is that for more than seven months the FEC lacked a quorum to act, due to the successful efforts by anti-free speech groups to scuttle appointments to vacant seats on the FEC.
These groups – including Democracy 21, Public Citizen, Common Cause and the Campaign Legal Center – propose a solution they hope and expect will allow them to dominate a committee to recommend new FEC appointees to the President.
"The structure of the Commission doesn’t really matter to pro-regulation groups," Smith said. "They claim they want commissioners to enforce the law, but what they really want is to choose commissioners who will gut the First Amendment in favor of any knee-jerk campaign finance restrictions they propose. They have no regard for either the letter of the statute or for constitutional protections of political speech."
These same organizations have opposed every significant reform undertaken at the FEC over the past decade.
"The entirety of the groups’ letter is built on the foundation that the FEC should be able to regulate political speech and association just like the Securities and Exchange Commission regulates stocks and bonds and the Federal Trade Commission regulates business competition and consumer protection," said CCP Legal Director Reid Cox. "What these anti-free speech groups never acknowledge is that the entire subject matter regulated by the FEC is subject to the constitutional protections for free speech and association under the First Amendment. These groups should be ashamed that they would turn back the clock on political speech and association to days not seen since the Red Scare."
