April 28, 2006

'08: The FEC Updates Communication/Coordination Provisions Updated

Dem lawyer Bob Bauer uncovers "the first significant regulatory change put in effect for the 2008 Presidential campaign."

The upshot: the doughtut between (roughly) January and April that allowed for campaigns to communicate with interest groups airing non-express advocacy commercials has been filled. (Heretofore, the NRA could coordinate, with Sen. John McCain on an ad that attacks Sen. Russ Feingold on guns.) (We gratuitously stole that example from Mr. Bauer.) Anyway, in re: the above example -- that type of (and that time of) coordination is now forbidden.

At the same time, the FEC relaxed the rules on coordination and communication for non-express advocacy commercials aimed at influencing Congressional campaigns.

Bauer provides his example: "Consider, then, the Iowa caucuses, scheduled (typically) for January, perhaps earlier rather than later in the month in 2008. Under the change made by the FEC, ads runs in that state, which refer to a Presidential candidate, are subject to the coordination restriction from a date beginning some four months before, in 2007, through November, 2008. If Citizens for Positive Campaigns run an ad denouncing the shortcomings of candidate X, this expanded rule would attach to its advertising about X in the State of Iowa for the balance of the election cycle. It does not matter that X won or lost the caucuses; or that X again appears in the State, or has any expectation of winning (or losing) it."

FEC chairman Michael Toner, in an interview, said that for congressional campaigns, "there's much broader latitude" to communicate about ads and strategy so long as those ads don't directly advocate a vote for or against a candidate.

As a consequence: groups like Americans United can still run ads on, say, the budget, and still sit at a roundtable with Dem congressional leaders until 90 days before the '08 election. But beginning in the fall of 2007, that same group can't communicate on ads referring to presidential candidates.

Bauer, in an e-mail to the Hotline, added this explanation: "What it does is account for the long stretch between the early primaries and the general, and to extend the prohibition on the Swift Boats (assuming that they coordinate with a candidate ) so that there is no free-fire zone between one 120 day period within a primary and another related to the general."

"Today, if a candidate runs in the Iowa caucusses, the restrictions ends in January and do not resume again until summer." [MARC AMBINDER]

Posted at 11:32 AM

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