Carolyn Lerner has written this NYT oped.  It begins: “THE federal agency I lead, the United States Office of Special Counsel, enforces a law that is broken and needs to be fixed. … [The Hatch Act] at its worst… prevents would-be candidates in state and local races from running because they are in some way, no matter how trivially, tied to a source of federal funds in their professional lives. Our caseload in these matters quintupled to 526 complaints in the 2010 fiscal year, from 98 in 2000. We advised individuals on this law 4,320 times in 2010.”