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McCain Campaign Finance Violations Go to the FEC |
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The DNC is suing the Federal Election Commission over its failure to investigate John McCain’s campaign finance practices.
From NPR this morning:
When McCain’s campaign was about to go broke over the winter, he got a line of credit from a bank. He had already applied for public financing. But when his fundraising got better, McCain declared that he was withdrawing from the public financing program.
The DNC lawsuit says he can’t do that — because he had already made financial use of his access to public funds. The Democrats point out that McCain’s campaign manager guaranteed to the bank that McCain could qualify for public money in the future.
Though McCain never made use of any public money, he is technically still signed up for the public funding program for the primaries. Last month, Firedoglake and the DailyKos complained to the FEC themselves that McCain had violated campaign funding law by surpassing the spending limits he is required to observe as an enrollee:
Meanwhile, McCain has been publicly attacking Barack Obama for reneging on a “promise” he made a year ago to accept public financing. Obama (who unlike McCain never applied for public financing for the primaries) in fact responded to a questionnaire with “If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.†McCain, with whom such an “agreement” would presumably be pursued, never bothered responding to the questionnaire, put to all the candidates by the Midwest Democracy Network last fall.
Of course, Obama is not yet the Democratic nominee and therefore hasn’t reneged on anything. Since responding to the questionnaire he has demonstrated that he can dramatically surpass what he would get from the public financing program (or what McCain will ever raise) with his small Internet donations, making it questionable whether he would now seek a public funding agreement in a general election. Also from NPR:
Obama told the audience at [a fundraiser in Washington last week] that his campaign has created “a parallel public financing system,” in which thousands of small donors, rather than the big donors, influence the candidate. In effect, he is arguing that millions of dollars in small Internet donations are as clean as public funding.
Looks like all candidates have been doing a little bet-hedging. In any event, it’s nice to know McCain considers Obama the one to beat.
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