Federal Election Commissioners Welcome Each Other's Hate

Paul Blumenthal
Updated
WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 03: Federal Election Commission (FEC) Commissioner Ellen Weintraub testifies during a hearing before the Elections Subcommittee of House Committee on House Administration November 3, 2011 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The hearing was to focus on the polities, processes and procedures of the commission. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) (Photo: )

WASHINGTON -- Nobody thought the monthly meeting held Thursday by the Federal Election Commission would turn one commissioner to ponder the existential question of whether she was, indeed, a real person. But nothing is out of the realm of possibility in the government’s most dysfunctional and acrimonious body.

The commissioners were supposed to address an unusual petition filed by commissioners Ann Ravel and Ellen Weintraub to tackle the issue of undisclosed “dark money” in elections -- unusual because no petition had ever been filed by a sitting commissioner acting in her role as a private citizen. And the three conservative commissioners wanted to make sure that the simple consideration of whether to publish the petition in the Federal Register for public comment was even more unusual.

After the petition was introduced, Vice Chair Matthew Petersen, a conservative commissioner, asserted that the petition should not be heard or even printed by the commission, as federal procedure rules state that a federal official does not qualify as a person able to file a petition.

From there, the commission fell into a rabbit hole of animosity that revealed how deeply these people don’t like one another.

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“First of all, let me say that I cannot believe that you are actually going to take the position that I am not a person,” Weintraub said with an exasperated smile on her face. “I find that a corporation is a person, but I'm not a person.”

“You want to insist that I am not a person,” she continued.

Petersen replied, “That’s right.”

“That's how bad it has gotten,” Weintraub said. “My colleagues will not admit that I am a person. That's really striking.”

Weintraub raised an example of a government official filing an FEC petition in the case of Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who filed a petition regarding commission regulations on the disclosure of donors to certain independent advertisements.

After some back and forth over the definition of a person under the Administrative Procedure Act, Weintraub and Commissioner Caroline Hunter soon found themselves arguing about who was the worse communicator.

“I asked the question if you were going to have a problem with this, and I got sort of an 'I don't know' and we're still talking about it,” Weintraub said. “And I just -- I'm having a hard time believing that all of this was concocted and that you guys weren't thinking this through before close of business yesterday. You know, if -- I actually did reach out to try and find out if you were going to have a problem and I wish that you would have just said that so that, you know, we would have known what we were walking into today.”

Hunter eventually responded, “I find it comical that we got an email from a staff lawyer who works with, I believe with the chair, I'm not sure, and attached is a rule-making petition on behalf of chair Ravel and commissioner Weintraub -- that is sent on June 8th, exactly 11 a.m. And then one of the Republican commissioners got an email from the USA Today -- on the very same day, June 8th, at 11:15 a.m. Wanted to get thoughts on this petition from Ravel and Weintraub and she includes a link to a story that she has already written on the petition. So, the first notice that we even -- we had no idea that this petition was being drafted. We found out first from the email that I said on June 8th at 11 a.m. and the story was already written by 11:15 a.m. So, so much for, you know, giving people a heads up and worrying about giving them time to talk about things.”

This argument soon turned to a debate over whose memory was better about whether the two had consulted each other on issues about campaign-super PAC coordination and other issues that were before the commission at different times.

Commissioner Steve Walther attempted to calm the commission down. He stated both his support for many ideas in the petition submitted by Ravel and Weintraub, as well as his discomfort with commissioners petitioning their own oversight body.

“And until we're willing to tolerate each other's views, our rule-making process is a farce,” Walther said. “I think we have to actually listen. Everybody here has a right in rule-making to have their views heard. When that happens, I think you'll find that we can make some rules available to the public for consideration. And in this particular case, it's -- to me, it is a call for help.”

After taking a break that lasted much longer than the stated two minutes, the commission returned to vote on a motion to postpone consideration of whether to post the petition for public comment until July.

A unanimous vote kicked the can one month down the road and left the public in the same place it was before -- with no rules to govern the increasing amount of undisclosed campaign spending in federal elections.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)

"Troubling reports suggest that it is back to business as usual at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York," Brown said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing in November after reports revealed that a current Goldman Sachs banker and a former New York Fed regulator obtained confidential information from the Federal Reserve. "It is no wonder that Wall Street always appears to stay one step ahead of the sheriff."

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)

"The over-representation of Wall Street banks in senior government positions sends a bad message. It tells people that one -- and only one -- point of view will dominate economic policymaking," Warren wrote in a November 2014 op-ed for The Huffington Post criticizing President Barack's Obama recent nomination of Antonio Weiss as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the Treasury Department."It tells people that whatever goes wrong in this economy, the Wall Street banks will be protected first. That's yet another advantage that Wall Street just doesn't need."

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

"These people on Wall Street spent billions of dollars, billions of dollars, trying to deregulate Wall Street and they got their way. Five billion dollars in ten years is what was spent, and then they were able to merge investment banks with commercial banks, with insurance companies. They got everything they wanted. They said get the government off the backs of Wall Street. They got it. And the end result was that they plunged this country into the worst recession since the great depression." -- Bernie Sanders on the Senate floor, June 2012

Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.)

“In order to protect taxpayers and investors, we need tougher anti-fraud laws and forceful oversight of Wall Street. Some of these institutions that are ‘too big to fail’ have also become ‘too big to care,'" Reed said in June 2012 while seeking support for legislation that imposed tougher penalties for Wall Street fraud. "If they look at the bottom line and see they can break the law, get caught, pay a nominal fine, and still profit, the cycle of misconduct will continue. The law needs to change to ensure the punishment fits the crime." Feb. 6, 2014. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)

Warren hammered Federal Reserve officials in September for failing to hold JP Morgan, Citi Group and Bank of America responsible for their role in the 2008 financial collapse. “The main reason we punish illegal behavior is for deterrence to make sure that the next banker who’s thinking about breaking the law remembers that the guy down the hall was hauled out in handcuffs when he did that," Warren said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing in September. "The message to every Wall Street banker is loud and clear: If you break the law, you are not going to jail, but you might end up with a bigger paycheck.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.