The FEC has turned down a proposal to allow more advertising by independent groups during federal campaigns. The restrictions were put in place by the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002, commonly known as the "McCain-Feingold" law. Jim Kuhnhenn of the Associated Press has the story:
WASHINGTON - Federal election regulators refused to ease limits on political advertising Tuesday, blocking an effort to let interest groups run radio and television ads mentioning elected officials within weeks of an election.
The Federal Election Commission voted 3-3 on a proposal that would have allowed such ads as long as they addressed public policy issues and did not promote, support, oppose or attack a sitting member of Congress. Supporters of the change said they wanted to strike a balance between campaign ad restrictions and constitutional free speech guarantees.The measure failed on a tie vote with the commission's three Democrats voting against the proposal and the three Republicans backing it.
Read the rest at link above.
In 2004, Democratic-leaning "527 groups" - so named because of the section of law which applies to their incorporation - raised and spent more than Republican groups, in large part due to large donations from George Soros and others, but they have not duplicated that effort for the midterm. Apparently Soros and some of the other deep-pocketed donors were disappointed their "investment" in '04 failed to topple Bush and the Republican Congress, and are putting up far less this time.
On the other hand, the Democratic House and Senate committees have been very competitive in fundraising of "hard money" for candidates for this cycle, with the Senate side having held a lead in both money raised and in cash on hand over their Republican counterparts for the first time in decades.
These two factors help explain why the Democrats on the FEC opposed the plan to loosen restrictions on spending other fund and by outside groups, while the Republicans were in favor.
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