FEC agreement breaks down over nominees

A Democratic move to install new members of the Federal Election Commission by next week and resurrect a dead agency fell apart when talks between the White House and Democratic Senate leaders broke down late Wednesday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and the Bush administration failed to come to agreement on the sixth commissioner, who would replace Hans von Spakovsky, the controversial GOP nominee that withdrew his name last Friday after a standoff with Democrats that lasted months and shuttered the FEC.

{mosads}The impasse also involved other appointees to executive branch agencies, according to a senior Democratic leadership aide.

“The White House gave us an offer of three pages of nominees and there were no Democrats on it,” the staffer remarked.

The staffer insisted Democrats want to fill the FEC. “We’re committed to the FEC, the commissioners could be on the job on Tuesday,” an aide said.

Democrats said the White House could keep current GOP pick David Mason in the post, but administration officials balked at the suggestion.

Reid plans to keep the Senate in a series of pro forma sessions over the Memorial Day recess to prevent Bush from appointing nominees to the positions while Congress is out of town.

The standoff occurred just as three nominees to the Federal Election Committee seemed poised to sail to confirmation. At press time it was unclear if the Senate Rules and Administration Committee would move forward with a vote to confirm the three nominees this week.

During the Rules Committee hearing Wednesday, the four senators who showed up only briefly questioned Democratic nominee Cynthia Bauerly and the two GOP nominees Caroline Hunter and Don McGahn.

Democrats left McGahn, a longtime general counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee who also served as an ethics and campaign finance adviser to former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), completely unscathed. Campaign finance watchdogs have warned against confirming McGahn because of his close ties to Republicans, but Democrats appeared to brush aside those criticisms.

“It’s a good team, a really good team,” Feinstein concluded at the end of the hearing.

The sanguine outlook stands in stark contrast with the furious Democratic reaction to von Spakovsky, which was withdrawn on Friday.

Democrats were outraged over the von Spakovsky nomination because he pushed voter I.D. laws while working in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, something Democrats strongly oppose as unfair to minorities and the poor. The outrage stalled the confirmation of four commissioners and shut down the agency’s activity for months.

Campaign finance watchdogs urged the Senate to reject McGahn early Wednesday before the hearing. Common Cause president Robert Edgar wrote a letter to Senate Rules Committee members expressing concern about McGahn.

The agency is supposed to have six commissioners, but only has two confirmed because of a standoff in the Senate over von Spakovsky. Republicans had refused to move Democratic FEC nominees unless Democrats allowed von Spakovsky’s nomination to proceed. The White House has yet to name someone for the von Spakovsky slot.

Because of the impasse, there are not enough FEC commissioners to hold a quorum and it has not been able to rule on a number of issues, including public financing inquiries from presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, heaped praise on Bauerly, who served as a policy director for Klobuchar, and most recently, as Schumer’s legislative director.

Hunter also has strong partisan ties. She was general counsel at the Republican National Committee, deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison and was appointed to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission where she worked for the last two years.

During his brief testimony, McGahn emphasized the non-partisan nature of FEC work.

“The Commission’s enforcement of the law must be impartial and non-partisan,” he said. “After all, the composition and procedures of the Commission are designed to preclude one political party from having a controlling majority over its decision.”

McGahn also addressed criticism that he wouldn’t be able to put aside his partisan leanings and act in a non-partisan manner on the FEC by referring to recent endorsements from longtime Democratic election lawyer Bob Bauer, who currently works for Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and Robert Lenhard, an outgoing FEC commissioner who previously served as a lawyer at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.