A Republican-backed initiative to ease regulations on political parties is set to be discussed at the Federal Election Commission’s Oct. 29 meeting and will test whether FEC commissioners, sharply divided over a range of issues, will rally to a call to strengthen parties.As with other issues faced by the FEC, consensus may be hard to reach on whether and how to change party rules, as even the new initiative’s sponsor acknowledged.The proposal’s sponsor, Republican FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman, told Bloomberg BNA in a phone interview Oct. 23 that he is proposing specific changes in party rules because both Republican and Democratic commissioners have in the past indicated support for strengthening the parties….
Specifically, Goodman’s memo said, his proposal would free political parties to coordinate “issue advertisements” mentioning candidates but stopping short of a direct call for votes. Parties also could republish parts of candidate materials in party-funded materials.
In addition, political parties would have greater ability to distribute “volunteer campaign materials” without triggering coordination limits. The definition of party volunteer activities would be expanded to include activities such as volunteer mail drives, phone banks, and literature distribution.Finally, regulations defining “federal election activity” would be eased to allow parties to register voters and urge them to vote for state and local candidates free from FEC regulation. Also, state and local parties would have greater leeway to employ staffers to engage in state and local “get-out-the-vote” activities using state-regulated contributions, rather than federally regulated hard money.Republicans in the FEC and on Capitol Hill have long supported moves to ease party coordinated spending limits, but congressional Democrats and groups supporting campaign regulations have battled against this move. However, some Democratic election attorneys have been sympathetic to proposals to strengthen parties by easing FEC regulations, especially for state and local parties.Reiff: Ease State Party RulesNeil Reiff, an attorney with the firm Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock who represents Democratic Party state and local committees, praised the move by Goodman to advocate for easing the FEC rules on political parties.“I’m very excited for the FEC to be taking this up,” Reiff told Bloomberg BNA in a phone interview. “I hope they can reach consensus” on amending the party rules cited in Goodman’s proposal.