FEC Fails to Enforce Laws, Should Be Abolished, Common Cause Says

The Federal Election Commission, established 15 years ago as part of the post-Watergate political reform movement, has failed to vigorously enforce campaign finance laws and ought to be abolished, a study by the Common Cause public interest group concluded Thursday.

The commission has followed “a pattern of evading tough decisions” on campaign finance, because of a stalemate produced by the partisan split between its three Democratic and three Republican members, the report charged.

“The result is growing non-compliance with the law, to the point where the integrity of the presidential campaign finance system . . . is now at risk,” Common Cause said.

But the chairman of the FEC, in a tart response, called Common Cause’s call for abolishment of the commission “unwarranted and reckless.”

Chairman Danny L. McDonald charged that “apparently this group’s frustration with campaign finance laws enacted by Congress is inappropriately being vented on the FEC.” He said the FEC’s job “is to enforce federal election laws, not rewrite them exactly as the lobbying group wishes.”

The public-interest lobby reserved its sharpest criticism for the FEC’s alleged failure to regulate the use of tens of millions of dollars in “soft money” by both major parties in the 1988 presidential election campaign.

Soft money refers to political funds raised outside of the federal limitations that apply to presidential candidates. Such money may be raised for voluntary party-building activities on the state level that include mass mailings, phone banks and other efforts to get voters registered and to the polls.

However, critics long have said that soft-money activities frequently provide crucial support to a presidential campaign and that contributors of such funds give both parties a source of unregulated campaign cash.

The Common Cause study noted that in the 1988 presidential race, the campaign organizations of President Bush and his Democratic rival, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, raised “unprecedented sums of soft money,” a combined total of $50 million from corporations, labor unions and individuals.

But the FEC took no action to prevent these funds from being used “on campaign activities intended to help advance the presidential tickets,” in spite of a 1987 court order by U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Flannery that the commission must write new rules covering soft money, the report charged.

“By its seemingly willful refusal to act, the FEC has sanctioned campaign activities that run counter to central provisions of the post-Watergate reform laws, including the statute’s campaign contribution and expenditure limits,” Common Cause said.

The soft-money case, in fact, best illustrates the FEC’s “pattern of evading tough decisions through partisan stalemate, or of taking actions that benefit the political parties at the expense of the public’s interest,” the study said.

It said the commission’s “weak organizational structure” features two results: unanimous votes on issues that benefit the political party system over the public interest and 3-3 ties on matters that favor one party over the other. The FEC chairmanship is rotated each year among the members, which leads to inconsistent leadership, the report said.