| WASHINGTON - October 24 - The Federal Election Commission has overridden its own
general counsel's findings that the 2000 Senate
campaigns of Senator Hillary Clinton, Attorney
General John Ashcroft and Senator Deborah Stabenow,
as well as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee (DSCC) and the National Republican Senatorial
Committee (NRSC), and several state political parties,
appear to have engaged in illegal schemes during the
2000 campaign to funnel soft money into their races.
The general counsel also cleared New York Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani's brief Senate campaign of any wrongdoing.
The investigation was prompted by a complaint filed in
April 2000 by Common Cause and Democracy 21.
"This is just one more example of the FEC Commissioners
overriding their professional staff to protect powerful
political figures and the corrupt soft money system at
the expense of enforcing the nation's campaign finance
laws. And it's just one more example of why the FEC has
to be replaced with a new effective enforcement system,"
said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21.
"To reach this conclusion, the commissioners had to
ignore existing law, ignore the evidence, and ignore
their own staff. By overturning the professionals at
the FEC, the commissioners have given a green light for
any candidate to get around the law, and shake down
corporations, labor unions and wealthy people for
unlimited contributions - as long as they bother to
launder the money through a party committee," Common
Cause President Scott Harshbarger said.
Senator Clinton's campaign claimed as precedent the
1996 Clinton-Gore ads that prompted years of
congressional and Justice Department investigation.
In each of the cases involving Clinton, Ashcroft and
Stabenow, the FEC general counsel urged the Commission
to find reason to believe that the Senate candidate's
campaign engaged in an illegal joint fundraising
scheme with its national party committee to raise
soft money and funnel it through the national party
to the state party, where it was used to buy so-called
"issue ads" to promote the Senate candidate's campaign.
The general counsel found that these ads were in fact
campaign ads that were for the purpose of influencing
a federal election by urging support for the Senate
candidate involved. The general counsel also found
evidence of coordination between each of the Senate
candidates and their state parties that ran these ads.
Because these ads were campaign ads to support Senate
candidates, they could not be funded with soft money,
according to the FEC general counsel. Further, the ads
were subject to the federal limits on the amounts that
a political party could spend in coordination with its
Senate candidates. (The Supreme Court recently upheld
the constitutionality of these coordinated spending
limits in Federal Election Commission v. Colorado
Republican Federal Campaign Committee.)
Since the political parties used soft money to pay for
the ads involved in the Clinton, Ashcroft and Stabenow
campaigns, and since the amounts spent far exceeded
the applicable limits on state party spending for
these ads, the general counsel recommended that the
Commission find reason to believe the law had been
broken and that the Commission should pursue the matter.
The Commission rejected these findings and summarily
voted to close the matter and end any investigation.
The Clinton, Ashcroft and Stabenow campaigns each set
up so-called "Victory Committees" for their 2000 Senate
campaigns, which were "joint fundraising" committees
designed to raise soft money and were sponsored by
their Senate campaign committees and the DSCC and the
NRSC respectively.
For more information, contact Democracy 21 at
202/429-2008 or Common Cause at 202/736-5770.
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