Some very interesting reading,,,,,,,,,,,,

http://www.politico.com/news/stories...393_Page2.html

The campaign finance dream team of Sens. Russ Feingold and John McCain is reuniting to block President Barack Obama’s first appointment to the Federal Election Commission and to push him to shake up the embattled agency.


In a surprising move that invokes memories of a bitter skirmish during Obama’s annihilation of McCain in last year’s presidential election, Feingold (D-Wis.) and McCain (R-Ariz.) have placed a hold on the FEC nomination of Democratic labor lawyer John Sullivan, POLITICO confirmed Tuesday. Their hold could reverberate in Congress, the White House, the 2010 midterm elections and beyond.


In a statement issued in response to POLITICO’s inquiries, the lawmakers signaled they would release the hold only if Obama taps two additional nominees to fill expired seats on the six-member independent panel, which critics contend is systematically deregulating campaign rules.

“The FEC is currently mired in anti-enforcement gridlock,” read the joint statement from Feingold and McCain, whose names became synonymous with efforts to limit the role of special interest cash in politics when they teamed to shepherd into law the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, better known as McCain-Feingold. “The president must nominate new commissioners with a demonstrated commitment to the existence and enforcement of the campaign finance laws.”


Their hold on Sullivan, who would replace a commissioner whose term expired two years ago, was exhilarating to advocates of limiting the role of money in politics, who want Obama to chart a new course for the agency. And it was an unmistakable shot across the bow of both Senate leaders and Obama, who have not moved to replace the two commissioners whose terms expired in May.


Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who the White House had consulted on the Sullivan nomination, declined to comment on the hold through a spokesman, while an aide to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) did not respond to questions.


The White House, which has reached out to the self-styled campaign finance reform community in an unprecedented way, also did not respond to questions about the hold.


But Craig Holman, a campaign finance lobbyist for the nonprofit group Public Citizen, called news of the hold “delightfully surprising.”


“First of all, it’s good to see McCain and Feingold working together again on the campaign finance front,” said Holman.


He and other campaign finance reformers had worked closely for years with McCain on campaign finance matters until the senator began distancing himself from them in the run-up to his presidential campaign as he courted the GOP base. It considers restrictions on political spending to be a violation of free speech.


In regards to reconfiguring the FEC, Holman, who has met with Obama’s representatives several times about campaign finance issues since the election, said, “The White House needs pushing on this. [Obama] hasn’t come out in front in the battle.”


As a senator, Obama was a staunch advocate for beefing up campaign finance rules, and as a presidential candidate he touted a campaign finance measure as one of his top legislative accomplishments. He also promised that he would participate in a Watergate-era clean election system if his Republican opponent did the same.


When McCain won the Republican nomination and agreed to participate, though, Obama flip-flopped, earning the personal enmity of McCain and the scorn of editorial boards and campaign finance reformers.

At the time, Obama pledged to fix the system as president. But he has yet to respond to entreaties from Feingold to support an overhaul bill. And he disappointed reformers when he passed up the chance to dramatically reconfigure the FEC, which has increasingly deadlocked in partisan 3-3 votes on enforcement matters, resulting in dismissal after dismissal and, reformers fear, emboldening would-be violators on the cusp of the 2010 midterm elections.


The commission by statute consists of three appointees from each party, and traditionally Senate leaders have passed lists of acceptable commissioner candidates from their respective parties to the president, who then selects nominees for Senate approval.


The terms of one Democratic and one Republican commissioner – Steven Walther and Don McGahn, respectively – expired in May, while another Democratic commissioner, Ellen Weintraub, has continued to serve on commission even though her term expired two years ago.


But Obama in May announced a single nomination – Sullivan’s – to fill Weintraub’s seat. The White House touted Sullivan, an associate general counsel at the Service Employees International Union, as “a staunch advocate for election reform” and promised that more FEC nominations “will be forthcoming,” but would not say when.


The Campaign Legal Center, a reform group headed by McCain ally and former FEC Chairman Trevor Potter, criticized Sullivan for “bash[ing] important elements of McCain-Feingold” when he filed comments with the FEC on behalf of SEIU.


But Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Center, said the real problem Obama needs to address is McGahn and the two other Republican commissioners, who have regularly voted against enforcement, often against the recommendation of the FEC’s career legal staff.


“Doing something about the FEC without doing something about the McGahn problem is just unacceptable,” McGehee said, adding “this is a guy who is basically implementing a deregulatory ideology in violation of both the spirit and letter of the law.”


That’s not how former FEC Chairman Brad Smith sees it.


Smith – who leads the Center for Competitive Politics, which holds that some limits on campaign spending unconstitutionally suppress free speech – defended the 3-3 splits as the byproduct of a thorough analysis of the law’s application to specific cases and accused Feingold and McCain of targeting McGahn.


“Let’s not dress this up as some noble crusade for good government – McCain and Feingold want someone on the commission who agrees with them,” Smith said. “And they’re going to hold up a guy [Sullivan] who seems to be really a very qualified nominee out of petulance.”


Smith also questioned McCain’s re-embrace of campaign finance issues.


“A cynic might note that now that McCain is no longer seeking the Republican nomination, he has returned to the fold.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories...xzz0K3utWpa3&D