The Independent View: FEC Doubles Major Party's Convention Funds

The deep freeze at the Federal Election Commission may be thawing.

After some five years of ties and gridlock, the commission approved several measures Thursday as part of a compromise brokered between its two newest members: Republican Chairman Lee Goodman and Democratic Vice Chairwoman Ann Ravel.

In a rare 4-2 vote, the long-gridlocked FEC approved a joint request from the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee that asked for permission to create a separate organization to finance the quadrennial conventions.

Currently, both the DNC and the RNC are limited to collecting a maximum of $32,400 from donors per two-year election cycle. The FEC vote allows both parties to collect an additional $32,400 to be put only toward convention activities.

That amount is also scheduled to increase in 2015 due to a pending inflation adjustment, and the extra money that both parties collect can be used only for certain convention expenses, such as, on ads or other election activities.

Both Democrats and Republicans portrayed the request as necessary in an era where presidential candidates no longer get public funds to put on their presidential nominating conventions.

“We appreciate the FEC’s recognition that, as the party convention committees adjust to the loss of public funding, they have authority to raise funds that will help pay the costs of their national conventions. This is an important, if modest, first step for the parties in continuing to meet their historic responsibility to conduct conventions, which play such a vital role in our democratic process,” the RNC and DNC said in a joint statement.

Reform groups opposed to the influence of money in politics blasted the decision by the FEC.

“This is an absurd interpretation that has no basis in law. A wealthy donor who had previously been limited to giving $32,400 per year to a national party can now make an additional $32,400 contribution per year to the party’s convention committee,” the reform group Democracy 21 said in a statement.

Previously, both parties and their respective presidential nominees took public money to host party conventions. But this year, President Barack Obama signed a bill that ended the annual taxpayer subsidy.

The funds, which totaled about $18 million per party in 2012, were instead put toward pediatric medical research at the National Institutes of Health.

Democratic FEC commissioner Ann Ravel joined the three Republican commissioners on the six-member panel in voting for the measure. Its passage included a handful of other measures like:

- In a 4-2 vote, the commissioners passed a package of changes that enshrined the controversial 2010 case Citizens United into the organization’s rules.

- On a separate 6-0 vote, they approved a similar rules change concerning the 2014 McCutcheon v. FEC decision.

The compromise also involves opening a public-comment period on all manner of issues.