Meredith McGehee 
 Our nation’s broadcasters are just not happy that the public can now get a glimpse at some of their dirty little secrets – their political files.  In fact, they are so unhappy that in comments filed earlier this week with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) urged the Commission to allow only local viewers to file complaints when broadcasters fail to fully comply with the law.  The comments were filed in response to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that proposes to require cable, satellite and radio to post online the political files they are required by law to maintain on paper.  

The Notice was issued after a request from the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), along with Common Cause and the Sunlight Foundation, represented by the Institute for Public Representation of Georgetown Law Center (IPR).


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CLC BLOG - by Meredith McGehee
Virginia’s culture of entitlement continues to be a stumbling block to reasonable, long-overdue ethics reforms.  The Washington Post quotes State Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment, Jr. as feeling “insulted” by proposed reforms to limit gifts to $100 and to close the loophole that allows state legislators to accept recreational trips of unlimited value.


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FROM CLC BLOG - The 32,000 public comments the Federal Election Commission (FEC) recently received in response to its request for comments on key money-in-politics issues could represent a healthy development for the beleaguered agency.

For years, the FEC has been dismissed—deservedly—as a dysfunctional backwater, either mired in partisan, ideology-driven bickering or focused on protecting incumbents' interests. Commissioners have too often been placed on the panel largely because of their dependability in protecting party interests, thus helping the agency earn its moniker as the "Failure to Enforce Commission."So it is not surprising that the only people who have traditionally paid attention to the agency are either the attorneys representing the political parties, candidates and political money groups or a handful of campaign finance reform advocates who have worked—usually in vain—to goad the Commission into useful action.

The Campaign Legal Center has long been a part of this last group. For the past 10 years, Senior Counsel Paul S. Ryan has often been a lonely voice representing the public interest at agency hearings or in filing comments. But over the past year or so, the agency has seemingly committed itself to engaging the public at large in the agency’s work. This is a good thing.

In laying out for the public record the reasonable policy options the FEC should adopt, Ryan and the Campaign Legal Center focused on building a record the courts could look to when deciding cases. But building that public record is just one part of changing a campaign finance system that is spinning out of control. The Campaign Legal Center recognizes that it is important for the FEC to hear from the other 99.9% of Americans who aren't players in the Washington money game. This is especially true after the Citizens United decision which has unleashed growing amounts of "dark money."

The 32,000 public comments filed with the FEC shows that a wide swath of the American people has a growing understanding of what's at stake in FEC decisions. The FEC should take this high level of interest as an opportunity to reorient its focus, from captive agency to a consumer protection agency. In this case, the consumers are the American voters.

Let's hope the FEC's fecklessness will start to diminish as more people pay attention to what the agency is—or isn’t—doing. The 32,000 is a good start.

Reuters.com by Meredith McGehee


The Chinese government hacked into U.S. defense systems. What makes Americans think that the Chinese — or the Russians, the Iranians or other foreign interests — are not also hacking into U.S. elections? 

Read the full op-ed at Reuters.com.

On December 18, 2014, McGehee appeared on "Meet the Press: Make the Case" on the topic "Should There Be More Disclosure in Political Contributions?"  In the point/counterpoint format hosted by Chuck Todd, McGehee squared off against Brad Smith of the Center for Competitive Politics.  Watch here.

In an opinion piece published in today's The Hill newspaper, Meredith McGehee writes that broadcast stations made money hand-over-fist this year on political advertisements even though it was a non-presidential election year. Yet the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the agency charged with enforcing campaign finance law, including laws against illegal coordination, was AWOL:  

The Hill
November 26, 2014

The FEC, the FCC and 2016

by Meredith McGehee

Broadcast stations made money hand-over-fist this year on political advertisements even though it was a non-presidential election year.   Spending on TV ads in federal and gubernatorial races topped $1 billion, according to the Wesleyan Media Project.  

One-quarter of that spending (about $250 million) came from groups that are supposedly independent of the candidates.  And $100 million of that spending came from “dark-money" groups that don't disclose their donors even though they are spending millions to affect the outcome of elections.  Of course, many of the ads aired by these non-candidate groups were negative, and many were run in barely masked coordination with a candidate.  For example, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell (R) and others put “B-Roll” on the Internet so that outside groups could copy parts of the footage and use it in their ads.  In North Carolina, the campaign manager of Senator-elect Thom Tillis (R)publicized a 1,000-word plan that detailed what kind of ad buys were needed to assist the Tillis’ campaign.  Yet, somehow we are supposed to believe there was no coordination. 

The Federal Election Commission (FEC), the agency charged with enforcing campaign finance law, including laws against illegal coordination, was AWOL.  The FEC remains frozen in partisan deadlock over what constitutes illegal coordination under the law, even though numerous examples in plain view could not pass the laugh test. With the FEC unable or unwilling to do the job it was created to do, a different federal agency now has the opportunity to play a leading role in responding to the new political campaign landscape after the Citizens United decision upended 100 years of campaign finance jurisprudence.  That agency is the five-member Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is charged with regulating our nation’s TV and radio stations and already has a longstanding mandate from Congress to disclose the deep pockets behind the ads. 

There are three issues awaiting action where the FCC can issue rational guidelines to replace outdated rules and regulations. 

Disclosure has been a bedrock requirement for programs and advertisements run on the airwaves. “Sponsorship identification requirements were first imposed upon broadcasters by the Radio Act of 1927 and the basic purpose of such requirements has not changed since that time,” the Commission wrote in 2000.  “Listeners [and viewers] are entitled to know by whom they are being persuaded.”  The Commission stated: 

The Commission’s “strict identification requirements” should not be relaxed because “[p]aramount to an informed opinion and wisdom of choice . . . is the public’s need to know the identity of those persons or groups who elicit the public’s support.”  

Yet, currently, the FCC is allowing TV station owners to ignore their statutory obligations to reveal the "true identity" of the sponsor of an ad.  

The Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause and the Sunlight Foundation, represented by the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law, filed complaints against stations that during the 2014 campaigns failed to include the true identity of ad sponsor even though that information was readily available to the station.  These complaints are pending.  In the aftermath of the Citizens United decision, dark-money spending on ads is expected to explode in the next presidential election, so it is even more important for the FCC to update sponsorship identification rules. 

Another area ripe for action is for the FCC to finish its proceeding on getting the political files online. TV stations have been required to maintain these files, which include information about ad costs and buys, and to make them publicly available as a means of ensuring compliance with rules governing ad rates for candidates and access to the airwaves.  Responding to petitions filed by the Campaign Legal Center and other members of the Public Interest Public Airwaves Coalition, the agency now requires all television broadcasters to upload their political files information to a FCC database. 

But broadcasters are continuing to drag their heels about providing the information in the online political files in a database format with standardized fields.  Instead, they insist on filing “pdf’s.”  Thus, the information in the political file is not sortable or searchable; instead, analyzing and understanding the data involves an enormous undertaking, going through each pdf and “scraping” the information to try and make sense of it.  So the FCC’s job on this issue is not done. 

Lastly, the FCC should require cable, satellite and radio to also place their political files online.  While most political ads air on broadcast TV, the number of ads on these other outlets is growing significantly as campaign consultants attempt to reach specific segments of voters that can be targeted more easily through these media.  The Commission is currently considering a proposed rule but has yet to send it out for public comment.  

With the 2014 mid-term elections over, the 2016 race for the White House will begin immediately.  It won’t be long before ads intended to influence the outcome of that election start to air in battleground and early primary states. 

With the FEC mired in dysfunction and Congress deadlocked, whether or not the American people have accurate information about the funders behind the millions of dollars spent on ads to influence their votes largely rests with the FCC.  It is time for the Commission to step up.


McGehee is policy director of the Campaign Legal Center and heads McGehee Strategies, a public interest consulting business. Read the full piece in The Hill

In a piece in today's Huffington Post, Meredith McGehee calls for remedial action if the US Senate has any interest in becoming relevant again to our nation's political discourse. 



The Huffington Post
October 21, 2014

The US Senate:  A Body in Denial

by Meredith McGehee, Policy Director, Campaign Legal Center


Approval numbers near the single digits -- check.  Widely panned as paralyzed and dysfunctional -- check. Low expectations for meaningful action regardless of which party is in control -- check.

Remedial action is necessary if the U.S. Senate has any interest in becoming relevant again to our nation's political discourse. While certainly no cure for what ails the body, a first step toward building back the institution's credibility is to strengthen the Senate's ethics process. 

It is currently a "black hole."

As the National Journal recently reported, the Senate Ethics Committee has not acted publicly on any violation since May 2012. It has dismissed every one of the more than 50 complaints that have been filed since 2012. (The number of complaints filed in 2014 won't be known until the committee files its annual report in January.) According to the National Journal, one of the cases the Committee dismissed in 2013 involved Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) who got involved in a tit-for-tat with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Ethics Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) over his hold on an energy bill and his threat to repeal federal contributions to Senator's health care plans. Sen. Vitter filed a complaint accusing the Democrats of bribery after he heard that

Democrats were considering a counter-plan to prevent any Senator who had solicited prostitutes -- a direct shot at Vitter -- or who voted for Vitter's amendment, from receiving the federal contributions. The Committee dismissed the case for lack of evidence, but voted against making that decision public.

The only way this sordid little affair became public is that someone outside the Committee leaked to the media the letters sent to the Senators, the National Journal reported.

Because there is no meaningful transparency in the Senate ethics process, there is no way for the public to assess whether or not the process is working. Instead, the public is simply supposed to take the Senate Committee's word for it that all is well and to accept the apparent delusion in the Senate that ethics are only a problem in the House of Representatives.

That is just not good enough. A vibrant democracy depends on public confidence in the integrity of the institution and the "black hole" that is the Senate ethics process is damaging that confidence.

Here is what the process should look like instead.

Modeled on the successful Office of Congressional Ethics in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate should create its own independent Ethics Office. That Office would accept allegations of ethics violations, and with subpoena power, investigate those allegations. In turn, the Senate Ethics Committee would adjudicate the cases forwarded to them by this Office.

The Office would also be the place to go for approval of privately financed travel. In this new "dark money" era, more and more groups with amorphous-sounding names are seeking to curry favor by underwriting trips for Senators and Senate staff. These newcomers often have no track record and raise the concern that they are acting as pass-throughs for sources of funds that would otherwise not be permitted to finance congressional travel.

Of course, the best policy result to deal with this possible money-laundering scheme would be to end privately financed travel for Senators. Just as Apple isn't allowed to provide free computers to Senate offices nor is Staples permitted to give Senators free office supplies, Senators shouldn't have their travel -- personal or official -- paid for by private sources. Just imagine the difference in what a Senator would see between a trip to the proposed Alaskan national Wildlife Reserve paid for and organized by an oil company (with interest in exploiting the natural resources) versus a trip organized and paid for by an environmental organization (with an interest in protecting wildlife). Instead, such a trip should be arranged by the Senate staff and paid for by official funds.

But don't hold your breath expecting an Ethics Office to be created any time soon or for privately financed travel to disappear. After all, this is the same body that, in full Luddite mode, still refuses to file its campaign finance reports electronically, preferring the slow, tedious and expensive paper model even though every other candidate for federal office files electronically. And despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary, this is also a body that believes it is above ethical reproach.

These important ethics changes will take time, but they are just one juicy public scandal away. 

In the meantime, the Senate should open up its current process, improve transparency for its ethics advisories provided to Senate office, and revise its rules to protect against inappropriate pass-through funding of privately financed travel. Groups seeking to pay for Senate travel should be required to reveal to the Committee the information needed to accurately assess whether the source of funds meets the Senate's rules for privately financed travel.

Senators like to think that, as the so-called "upper body," they are held in higher public esteem than other elected officials throughout the country. The polling numbers show in no uncertain terms that is not the case. Until the ethics process is reformed, there's little hope the Senate will see its reputation redeemed in the public's eyes.