A ‘doozy’ of a campaign-finance violation

It’s fairly routine for big campaigns to run afoul of some campaign-finance measure. A campaign may miss a deadline, or misreport a donation, or exceed a spending limit. In general, the Federal Election Commission notices, the candidate in question makes amends, and nary an eyebrow is raised.

But a $40 million excess in campaign spending isn’t just a clerical error.

The three Democrats on the Federal Election Commission revealed yesterday that they strongly believe President Bush exceeded legal spending limits during the 2004 presidential contest and that his campaign owes the government $40 million. Their concerns spilled out during a vote to approve an audit of the Bush campaign’s finances, which is conducted to make sure the campaign adhered to spending rules after accepting $74.6 million in public money for the 2004 general election.

The conflict apparently arose behind the scenes, but the FEC’s audit of the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign reportedly divided commissioners. “We had a disagreement on this audit, and it was a doozy,” said one of the Democrats, Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub.

At $40 million, I should say so.

What happened that allowed Bush’s campaign to exceed spending limits by so much? It took a degree of Enron-like accounting — and some help from Bush’s buddies.



The campaign spent $80 million on television ads it labeled “hybrid” ads — they promoted the president’s bid for a second term, but also included references to Republican congressional candidates. By throwing in House and Senate candidates, the Bush gang made up its own rule — the ads were only half about the president’s campaign, so it meant the aides decided only half of the costs counted for financing purposes. (The RNC reported the other half.)

This was particularly egregious because Bush participated in the public-financing system — after his convention, the president and his campaign team accepted the $74.6 million in public funds for the general election. If they’d played it straight, those “hybrid” ads that touted the president in key states/districts nationwide would never have run.

So why are we just now hearing about this? Because the Bush-appointed Republicans on the FEC rejected the Dems’ concerns.

Commissioner Hans A. von Spakovsky, a Republican, [said,] “There was no broken bargain,” he said. “There was no violation of the law.”

And who’s Hans A. von Spakovsky? Barbara O’Brien reminds us of concerns from 2005:

The most objectionable nominee is Hans von Spakovsky, a former Republican county chairman in Georgia and a political appointee at the Justice Department. He is reported to have been involved in the maneuvering to overrule the career specialists who warned that the Texas gerrymandering orchestrated by Representative Tom DeLay violated minority voting rights. Senators need the opportunity to delve into that, as well as reports of Mr. von Spakovsky’s involvement in such voting rights abuses as the purging of voter rolls in Florida in the 2000 elections.

The Dems’ objections were also blocked by Commissioner Michael E. Toner, who just so happened to be a former Bush attorney and counsel to the Republican National Committee.

Bush gets by with a little help from his friends, doesn’t he?