New FEC chief on 'dark money' mission
Democrats made sport of decrying, vilifying and crucifying the billionaire Koch brothers for injecting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Republican-boosting “dark money” into the 2014 elections.
But newly minted Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ann Ravel — a left-leaning Democrat and campaign finance reformer, by most any political measure — has no appetite for such theater. Even if, as chairwoman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission last year, she helped levy massive penalties on Koch-backed groups caught circumventing state political disclosure laws.
A pox on both parties’ houses, as far as she’s concerned, for using secretive cash to influence elections.
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“The Kochs, they are not a problem to me, nor are their activities specifically anything I want to address,” Ravel said. “Dark money is a broader problem — a much broader problem. It’s a problem for those on the Democratic side as well as the Republican side. It’s not a partisan question for me.”
Expect Ravel, who this morning won the FEC’s top job by a 5-0 vote of her commission colleagues, to evangelize campaign transparency and disclosure for all political players during her upcoming term as chairperson. Her target audience: outside-the-Beltway folks who aren’t election lawyers or political practitioners, but are nevertheless concerned about big money’s influence in politics.
When reminded that she just spent the last year deadlocking with her Republican counterparts on virtually all political transparency matters, she smiled.
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“I still have hope for this year,” said Ravel, who joined the FEC in late 2013 after leading the California Fair Political Practices Commission. “My goal is at least make some incremental change in the disclosure of dark money.”
Inheriting a 'dysfunctional' agency
Even that will prove a monumental task for Ravel.
Related: FEC's top Democrat takes show on road
While it doesn’t appear in the job description, a key qualification for leading the FEC, set up in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal as a check on political corruption and campaign law enforcer, is masochism.
Consider that the chairperson, who serves a one-year term before yielding to a colleague backed by the opposing party, wields little additional power compared to other commissioners.
Agency commissioners frequently fail to reach consensus, or even a voting majority, on anything more than perfunctory matters. Dozens of enforcement cases, some years old, remain unresolved.
Related: FEC gets modest budget boost
There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.
This story is part of Primary Source. Primary Source keeps you up-to-date on developments in the post-Citizens United world of money in politics. Click here to read more stories in this blog.
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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
