June 24, 2002 New York Times editorial
It took seven years for supporters of campaign finance reform to pass the McCain-Feingold law banning unregulated "soft money" in elections. It took less than seven days last week for a handful of political appointees on the Federal Election Commission to open up vast loopholes allowing the very fund-raising barred by the statute.
Arrogantly ignoring the law's language, the intent of Congress and even the recommendations of their own legal staff, the commission members gutted major provisions and created huge exemptions out of whole cloth. This was a mugging of the statute that must be overturned by Congress or in the courts.
The Federal Election Commission is composed of six appointees, three Republicans and three Democrats. The Republicans have all been against campaign finance reform over the years. One of them, Michael Toner, a former Republican Party general counsel, told The Washington Post that one of the provisions he supported was "a total carve out" of the law's across-the-board ban on soft-money fund-raising by federal officeholders or candidates. But it is not Mr. Toner's job to make "carve outs" at whim. He and the other G.O.P. members could not have succeeded without the support of one of the Democrats, Karl Sandstrom, whose term has expired but who still sits on the commission.
In a series of rulings, Mr. Sandstrom and the three Republicans shredded one of the law's most important features, which was the severing of the toxic link between federal officeholders and candidates and the raising of unlimited sums from corporations, unions and rich donors.
The law is clear, for example, that a federal officeholder or candidate may not raise, solicit or direct soft money elsewhere. The rules would allow anyone to raise such money for state parties as long as he didn't directly solicit the donation. So Congressional leaders could still show up at fund-raisers sponsored by state parties and "suggest" that donors fork over money. Before approving its new rules on Saturday, the commission also added a loophole that would allow special groups set up before the law takes effect on Nov. 6 to continue to raise soft money.
These rules and exemptions are nothing less than an abuse of power by unelected bureaucrats pushing a corrupt agenda of favoring special-interest money over the voices and votes of citizens. The sponsors of campaign reform - Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold and Representatives Christopher Shays and Martin Meehan - deplored what the commission did. But the silence of other reform champions - notably the Democratic leaders, Representative Richard Gephardt and Senator Tom Daschle - is conspicuous. All those who worked so hard to pass this law must now work just as hard to undo the damage meted out by the F.E.C., and start thinking about replacing the commission with some other body that would implement the law rather than rewrite it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/24/opinion/24MON1.html?ex=1025932444&ei=1&en=5242d24e90eafb61