Last Week At The FEC: Accusations Of Partisanship And The Press Exemption Take Center Stage

Andrew H. "Andy" Emerson is an Associate in our Washington-DC office

Originally published December 30, 2013

Last week the Federal Election Commission did not meet, but made public two campaign finance enforcement matters that were resolved through the Commission's alternative dispute resolution (ADR) program, as well as a Statement of Reasons authored by the Commission's Republican members regarding a dismissal of MUR 6703, a complaint brought by a Libertarian candidate who alleged that he was wrongly excluded from a televised debate in the 6th District of Massachusetts during the last general election.

ADR Resolutions

The Commission published the results of ADR 649 and ADR 653, both of which were decided on December 17, 2013.

ADR 649 dealt with the American Postal Workers Union Committee on Political Action's (APWU COPA) failure to report expenses associated with communications with its members it mailed in October 2012. The Committee mistakenly amended its 12 Day Pre-General Report to include these expenditures as debt and agreed to file an additional amendment removing that debt during the ADR process. The Commission failed, by a vote of 2-4, to approve a settlement agreement and then exercised its prosecutorial discretion to close the file and terminate proceedings without assessing any penalty.

In ADR 653, the Commission's Reports Analysis/Audit Division (RAD) referred Edwin Peacock for Congress to ADR for failing to disclose all of its financial activity after the Committee amended its 2012 July Quarterly Report to disclose additional disbursements of $205,953.05. The Committee advised the RAD that this disbursement was due to a clerical error related to repaying a loan made to the Committee by Mr. Peacock. The Commission subsequently reviewed and approved the proposed settlement agreement, which included final termination of the Committee, by a 4-2 vote.

MUR 6703 and the Press Exemption

Republican and Democrat Commissioners voted unanimously to dismiss a complaint brought by Mr. Daniel Fishman, a former Libertarian candidate for Congress in the 6th District of Massachusetts, but split on whether the Press Exemption, found at 2. U.S.C § 431(9)(B)(i), should have barred it from investigation the subject matter of the complaint.

In his complaint against WCBV-TV, a Hearst Stations, Inc., television station, Mr...