There are some major, troubling things happening at the FEC. If you follow this blog, you know that there have been a number of key 3-3 splits along party lines in recent months, on some important, high profile complaints. As things stand now, the FEC appears to be at the cusp of opening up the floodgates to 527 and 501(c) activity, mostly unregulated. President Obama dropped a controversial nomination to the FEC late Friday afternoon, and loud protests from the campaign finance reform community have begun.
Certainly these developments will continue to get covered by the specialty press: Roll Call, The Hill, and Politico. Likely Eliza will write about them for National Journal, and Peter Overby will be able to get a story picked up by NPR.
But where are the Times and Post? Glen Justice, and then Michael Luo, covered these issues for the Times. But since the election, there’s been very little coverage, beyond the very good story picked up online only by The Caucus blog by Bernie Becker. The situation is worse at the Post, where Matthew Mosk apparently has been pulled on to other matters, with no one yet appearing on the FEC beat.
I know that newspapers are hurting, and perhaps there are higher priorities. But I’ll bet that these newspapers are more likely to devote resources to the salacious but less important John Edwards FEC story (which got an AP story in today’s NY Times) than to the important policy issues going on now at the FEC. Without major attention from the national press, the push to improve the FEC will fail, and meaningful campaign finance reform will fail along with it.