The Daily Beast: Super PACs Have Brought Rick Perry Back to Life

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“The FEC says only certain actions of theirs need to be independent of candidates,” former FEC chairman Trevor Potter said of super PACs. ...

“Nonetheless,” Potter said, “it appears that these groups may be violating even the commission’s narrower rules.” ...

Potter agreed. He said the FEC, which is run by three Republicans and three Democrats, has been “essentially deadlocked since the new commissioners came on in 2008 and 2009.” ...

Votes by the six-person commission are often 3-3 ties, which Potter, Ryan, and FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel blame on the body’s Republican members: Lee Goodman, Matt Peterson, and Caroline Hunter. The three are, according to their critics, ideologically opposed to campaign finance regulation and are dedicated to carrying out the wishes of the Republican congressional leadership. But Goodman, in a May column for Politico magazine, argued that the makeup of the body is the problem, not its members. ...

”It’s the worst-case scenario,” Potter told me, “where you have all of this activity which appears to be in tandem with candidates and outside groups, but nobody is doing anything about it.”

“The court said, ‘We’re gonna allow a flood of unlimited money into our elections, but don’t worry, America, the money will be independent of candidates so it can’t corrupt them,’” said Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center. “Five years later—predictably, in my view—it’s not at all independent.” ...

“What I think is going on, with respect to presidential candidates across the board, is a) they know the Federal Election Commission is mired in partisan gridlock and will not be enforcing the laws in this cycle; and b) that the Department of Justice has very little history of enforcing campaign law,” Ryan told me. “So from the view of super PACs, there is no cop on the beat. It’s a Wild West out there.” ...

Votes by the six-person commission are often 3-3 ties, which Potter, Ryan, and FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel blame on the body’s Republican members: Lee Goodman, Matt Peterson, and Caroline Hunter. The three are, according to their critics, ideologically opposed to campaign finance regulation and are dedicated to carrying out the wishes of the Republican congressional leadership. But Goodman, in a May column for Politico magazine, argued that the makeup of the body is the problem, not its members. ...

As Ryan noted, “The president has not lived up to his own campaign promises.”

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