Campaign finance watchdog groups End Citizens United Action Fund (ECU), Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and Public Citizen sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today calling on the agency to confirm its rules around political advertising that provide candidates with lower costs. The letter follows a split 3-3 decision in which Republican commissioners of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) gave the green light for campaigns to pay for political ads through joint fundraising committees (JFC). In some markets, it costs up to 25 times more for an outside group to air an ad than it would for a candidate.
“We write to request that you publicly confirm that Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) rules governing political advertisements, including advertising rates, apply only to ads paid for by legally qualified candidates,” wrote the campaign finance watchdog groups in a letter to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “We request that you also confirm that a candidate must pay for at least 50% of an ad to trigger the favorable access and treatment and advertising rates under these rules.”
FCC rules require that television stations sell ads to political campaigns at the Lowest Unit Rate (LUR) – a public service of sorts to help candidates share their message with voters. Currently, Republicans JFCs are paying LUR for television ads in key Senate battleground states – despite 99 percent of the funding coming from National Republican Senatorial Committee accounts.
Today’s letter follows ECU’s previous advocacy against this blatant attempt to bypass contribution limits and undermine our campaign finance system. Last week prior to the FEC’s hearing on this issue, ECU submitted a comment arguing that the practice of JFCs, which include committee legal and building funds, paying for campaign advocacy ads “is a plain violation of the law.”
Read the full text of the letter to the FCC here.
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