Obama, Jackson, Jr., Off FEC Hook

The Illinois Republican Party failed to pin the tail on three donkeys.

An ex post facto rule seems to have saved two federal legislators.

U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate Barak Obama and U.S. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., are off the Federal Elections Commission hook with which Illinois Republicans tried to catch them for primary endorsements of then-State Treasurer candidate Alex Giannoulias in radio ads and billboards.

The GOP charged that the use of non-federal funds for the radio ads and a billboard in which Jackson endorsed Giannoulias “constituted electioneering communications and coordinated communications that were financed with non-Federal funds.”

According to its email,

The Commission concluded that

• the radio advertisement did not qualify as an electioneering communication and
• was not a coordinated communication with respect to Senator Obama.

I certainly do not know what “electioneering communication” means in FEC-speak, but it seems to me that all political radio ads are “electioneering communications.”

And, so are political billboards.

Perhaps someone more conversant with Federal rules than I can enlighten us.

The FEC

exercised its prosecutorial discretion and dismissed the coordination allegation against Congressman Jackson on the grounds that a regulation enacted four months after the airing of the radio advertisement exempts the complained-of activity from the coordination regulations.

Let’s see.

It was illegal for Jesse Jackson, Jr., to do what he did when he did it, but, if he had done it four months later, it would have been legal.

Case dismissed.

Oh, now I understand.

John Tsarpalas filed the complaint.

Nice try, John.

Posted first at McHenry County Blog.