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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The short version of McCain's FEC problem

Just a nice, brief description McCain's FEC problem.
McCain applied for public financing last year, when his campaign was faltering. In February, when his campaign had turned around, he wrote the FEC seeking to exit the system. But to do so, McCain needed to show he had not yet received any federal funds and had not used the promise of those funds as collateral to borrow money.

Should the FEC or a federal court force him to remain within the system, he would have to abide by a $54 million spending cap until September, when the primary season ends. His campaign had spent $49 million as of Jan. 31, reports show.


He could opt out in the general, but basically his campaign would be unable to spend a penny of "primary money" until the Republican Convention in September.

Some of that spending could be made up by the RNC or outside groups, but effectively, his campaign couldn't even have paid staff.

Right now, McCain's plan seems to be to ignore all this and keep spending.

(And, Huckabee is pressing this all over the place.)

posted by mikevotes at 7:46 AM

4 Comments:

  • McCain will simply ignore the FEC. Rules don't apply if you're a Repub on a righteous cause, don't you know.

    By Blogger -epm, at 8:46 AM  

  • I think his claim will be that the FEC didn't have a quorom. There're some empty seats held up over confirmation.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 8:53 AM  

  • I know. But is an FEC stacked with corrupt shills any better than what we have now? At least this way there's a cloud over shady stuff. It's not swept away with the corrupt, though official, FEC commissioners.

    By Blogger -epm, at 10:18 AM  

  • I dunno.

    I think this is more about the perception on McCain, and is likely to be used by the Dems to try and shield Obama from the charge that he he pledged to go public financing.

    At worst, McCain pays fines in 2009 which are covered by some form of contributions or legal defense fund.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 11:06 AM  

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