The FEC and John McCain

An in depth look at John McCain and his problem with the FEC from the Center for Competitive Politics. This is probably the best rundown of McCain's run in with McCain-Feingold. In fact, it's probably more than you would ever want to know about it.

Maverick hamstrung by his own Legislation?

This story is wayyyy better than the NYT smear piece. Oh, and the irony so very very sweet:

John McCain had taken out (a loan), in which he tried to use his future eligibility for federal matching funds as collateral. Presumably, he did this in order to get the money he needed to keep his campaign afloat without using the matching finds themselves as collateral. And the reason it was important not to use those funds as collateral was that according to the FEC, doing so would constitute "accepting " those funds, and thus subjecting himself and his campaign to the limitations that go with it.

Read the rest here.

Also, Hilzoy (guest blogging at Sullivans place) gives additional background here.

So the campaign finance legislation that bears his name (McCain-Feingold) could also be the law that limits the amount of money that he can spend to win the presidency. I'm going to fire off a letter to the FEC right now.

The $49 Million Delegate

That's how much Rudy Giuliani spent on his doomed presidential bid. For all of that money, Rudy received a total of ONE delegate to the GOP convention. I wonder where the $12 mil that's left over goes?

At least he's not John McCain, who, while the presumed front runner for the nomination, had at the end of the 4th quarter about $3 mil cash on hand. He probably has had a surge in funding with his recent primary victories, but there is no way that he's going to be able to compete with Mitt Romney as far as cash for advertising is concerned.

Even worse off is Mike Huckabee, the Iowa caucus winner reported just under $700k cash on hand for the end of the 4th quarter. He's done after Super Tuesday.

Mitt Romney has a personal fortune of around $250 million and has lent his campaign around $40 million of it to date. His 4th quarter donations from people other than himself totaled around $9 million. He ended up with around $2.5 million cash on hand.

The big winner in the money raising race for the 4th quarter? Ron Paul. His donations totaled nearly $20 million, with the balance sheet reading nearly $8 million cash on hand by the end of the 4th quarter. What's interesting is that despite the media blackout, the lack of speaking time at the debates, and his ability to attract his fair share of kooks, nuts, and geeks. His fundraising totals have grown each and every quarter.

The FEC reports are here and a good write up from the LA times of last quarter is here.

Of course all of this pales in comparison to Barack Obama. In the month of January, he raised $32 million dollars.

My god, the GOP is gonna lose and lose big.

Wired Mag: RP Supporters Hack Campaign Finance Laws

Wired Magazine writes:

What makes the effort special (aside from the whole blimp thing) is that it's not being run by the Ron Paul campaign, nor is it funded by a tax-exempt "527" group, nor by a political action committee, or PAC. Instead, it's spearheaded by a newly formed for-profit corporation named Liberty Political Advertising. That for-profit status means that donors are really "customers" and thus can seemingly contribute as much money as they want, irrespective of the $2,300 annual limit on individual contributions to a primary campaign. They can also disregard the $5,000 limit on contributions to a PAC promoting a candidate.

I've never been a fan of the FEC or anything at all regarding campaign finance regulation as long as there's transparency on where the money was coming from and where it was being spent. Since political speech should be the most protected form of free speech. Spending limits should be the first thing to go.

That we have essentially a 2 party system and incumbents have a hard time leaving office should tell you something about how thoroughly inept and corrupt our government is.

I mean really, for taking half of everyone's paycheck, are we getting our money's worth?

Ron Paul Blimp Charts New Territory

UPDATE: From Reason's blurb in the comments section (addressing the FEC concerns):

I half-ignored the blimp talk, because I thought the blimp was a waste of money relative to buying radio or TV time independently, and I thought it gave Wonkette too many opportunities to make fun of Ron Paul.

But adding the "Fuck you FEC! Come and get us, motherfuckers!" element to the blimp makes this damn near a revolutionary act.

It would have been TRULY revolutionary to simply ignore the FEC altogether. But inventing a form of organization designed to make them irrelevant, and bury their bureaucracy in paper while doing it, is a nice second best.

UPDATE: The blimp will fly this weekend. ABCnews has a good write up about it.

From Politico.com:

If a whimsical publicity stunt goes as planned, a blimp hyping the long-shot Republican presidential campaign of the Texas congressman will launch next week.

The Ron Paul blimp is set to fly from North Carolina, over Washington, New York and Boston, before heading to New Hampshire, where the Jan. 8 primary offers the iconic libertarian perhaps his best chance of translating his zealous Internet support into votes.

Like the unprecedented online fundraising behind Paul’s bid, the blimp effort, which appears on pace financially, isn’t affiliated with the official campaign and pushes traditional political conventions.

I like this part because I think campaign finance laws are a big sham:

...the outside lawyer retained by blimp backers is former Federal Election Commission chairman Brad Smith, who is advising former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s rival bid for the GOP nomination.

Smith is among the leading opponents of campaign finance laws, and the blimp plan offers common cause on that front with Paul’s anti-regulation supporters, as well as an opportunity to set potentially far-reaching FEC precedent.

Further down:

As for the money floating the blimp, Collette and Smith have developed a detailed business plan carefully structured to avoid Byzantine campaign finance laws.

They shunned traditional mechanisms such as creating an independent non-profit group under section 527 of the IRS code — like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the other groups that spent millions on ads in 2004 — or a political action committee — like EMILY’s List. Instead, they went an almost unheard of route, establishing a for-profit company: Liberty Political Advertising.

Check out www.ronpaulblimp.com for their revamped site and you can view in realtime how much money they have raised.