A district court judge ruled that the Democratic Party can’t proceed in a lawsuit seeking to force the government to investigate John McCain’s finances. The court said it won’t have jurisdiction over the case until the party waits 120 days for the Federal Election Commission to act, something the Democrats wanted to avoid because the commission doesn’t have a quorum to do so.
The ruling wasn’t based on the merits of the case, which focused on the McCain campaign’s ability to unilaterally withdraw from the government’s public financing system after qualifying for matching funds.
McCain’s problems stem from last summer, when his campaign nearly went broke. While his Democratic rivals were raising record sums, he signed up for an increasingly outmoded Watergate-era public matching-grant program—and its effective spending cap of $57 million before the Republican Party’s convention in St. Paul, Minn. He passed that spending cap in February after he emerged as the party’s likely nominee, campaign financial reports show. Also that month, he notified the FEC he was withdrawing from the public-financing system, arguing he could do so because he hadn’t yet accepted any money from the U.S. Treasury. However, the campaign may have violated the law by taking a loan that involved a pledge to try to do so later on.
The McCain camp maintains that the loan was legal, and it doesn’t need the commission’s approval to withdraw from the program. A recent compromise means the Senate may be close to a vote on nominees to the commission, but the issue of McCain’s finances is still unlikely to be resolved quickly.
Source: blogs.wsj.com via politisite
The Democratic National Committee had asked that the court force the Federal Election Commission to take action against McCain, saying he had already made use of the program by securing a bank loan on the promise of public money.
Source: blogs.abcnews.com via politisite
Need a giggle? Watch McCain sings Steisand. McCain says since she has been trying to do his job for 20 years, he figured he would try hers
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