Obama's FEC Deadlock Fixes Itself
Friday, May 16, 2008
Printable FormatCongressional Quarterly By David Nather
A bit of late-breaking news tonight: That Federal Election Commission deadlock Barack Obama helped create seems to have solved itself.
Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department lawyer whose nomination to the FEC was strenuously opposed by Obama and other Democrats, withdrew his name tonight after tying up the entire process of filling the commission's vacant seats for months.
Obama and Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold had placed holds on von Spakovsky's nomination because of his civil rights views - he had overruled objections to a Georgia law requiring voters to produce photo identifications at the polls. But Republicans insisted on moving all of the FEC nominations together or not at all.
Given that choice, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada chose the second option and stuck with it. Obama needed a functioning FEC - but neither he nor Reid were willing to pay the price of having von Spakovsky on the commission.
In a statement tonight, Obama said von Spakovsky "disqualified himself from this position by undermining the long tradition of professional, nonpartisan administration of voting rights laws at the Department of Justice."
"I hope that today's announcement removes the last obstacle to reconstituting this important agency," Obama said. Since the entire deadlock revolved around von Spakovsky, it probably will.