Remember When I Said FEC Commissioner Ravel Could Be Replaced with a Non-Democrat Deregulationist?

I got a lot of pushback for making that suggestion, as in this NYT piece. People said I was giving him ideas, but I have no doubt this occurred to them before I mentioned it.

But now HuffPo reports this is coming closer to reality:

The administration’s efforts, these sources told The Huffington Post, could result in commissions tasked with overseeing trade enforcement, election law, and financial and energy regulation being stacked with nominees sympathetic to the president.

Pending positions on the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Election Commission and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are among those at stake. And President Donald Trump, according to these sources, is looking to rescind both Republican-backed nominees as well as Democratic ones.

By statute, these five- and six-member commissions can have no more than three members from the majority party. For six-member commissions, that assures bipartisan cooperation ― or, as has happened at the FEC, utter gridlock. The narrow majority on five-member commissions requires a commission to govern closer to the center. A chair who loses just one vote from his or her own party loses everything.

As the article suggests, the real question is whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will go along with this.

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