A deadlock by the U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Public Citizen’s request that the agency close a loophole of its own making that allows federal contractors to make campaign contributions through subsidiaries means the loophole remains. The 3-3 vote came Tuesday evening.
“It’s irresponsible for the agency to let stand a policy that guts a key campaign finance rule,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “Any major corporation can set up multiple entities within the same corporate family, one for making campaign contributions to curry favor and another for receiving the largess of lucrative government contracts.”
The silver lining, Holman said, is that Public Citizen’s petition (PDF) and the comments from the public and other elections enforcement agencies in support of it may have helped guide the FEC general counsel’s office on how to enforce effective pay-to-play laws and helped win over the Democratic commissioners to support reconsidering the agency’s current policy. The petition is well poised to resurface with any change in the FEC’s membership.