In a stroke of near biblical irony, John McCain is in trouble over campaign financing again. When he was broke, and his campaign hit the skids last year, he opted for public financing as collateral for a $4-million loan. Of course, since then, his fortunes have improved dramatically, and he recently told the Federal Election Commission that he wants to opt out of public financing. By doing so, he would not be hamstrung by its $54-million spending cap in the primaries. Normally, McCain’s evading rules that he has spent half of his career to get adopted would not be a problem, since he never actually received or spent any of the public funds. However, the FEC has to rule on the issue, but it cannot do so because the board lacks a quorum. There are four vacant seats on the Board due to the Senate’s years-long foot-dragging on giving President Bush’s nominations an up or down vote. Since it’s now up to Democrats to approve President Bush’s nominees, the FEC will likely not decide this issue this year.
To make matters more difficult for McCain, the Democratic National Committee has filed a suit against him to force him to stick to the spending cap. If this cap holds, it could spell big trouble for McCain, because he has already spent close to $50 million. Essentially, he would be able to spend only $4 million between now and the start of the general election. Just how the Republican nominee for president will get out of this fix remains to be seen, but he never would have gotten into it in the first place were it not for a certain onerous piece of First Amendment-abridging legislation.
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