Election Regulators Take First Step on New “Bundling” Rules

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Election Regulators Take First Step on New “Bundling” Rules
By CQ Staff | 5:28 PM; Oct. 30, 2007

By Emily Cadei, CQ Staff

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Tuesday signed off on a proposal for new reporting requirements that would be placed on lobbyists who gather individuals’ campaign contributions for lump-sum delivery to a candidate or other political committee — an activity in which many of these so-called “bundlers” participate in order to enhance their own political influence. This proposal will now be the subject of subsequent hearings and possible amendment, with a final rulemaking vote to follow.

The FEC’s bundling proposal pertains to a provision in an ethics and lobbying law cleared by the Democratic-controlled Congress and signed in September by President Bush. The section requires federal candidates and certain political committees to disclose information concerning lobbyists from whom they have received more than $15,000 in bundled contributions over in a specified period of time. The requirements now officially proposed by the FEC would provide procedures for enforcing that statutory language.

According to Larry Noble, an elections attorney and former FEC general counsel, the upcoming rulemaking stage will be critical to determining the scope of the law. Noble said the effectiveness of the new law “is going to depend in large part on how the FEC decides to implement it.”

Noble anticipates that a key issue in that implementation will center on definitions of which actions and which fundraising participants are covered by the new rules. “I think there’s going to be a lot of discussion over who falls under these regulations — who is considered a lobbyist or lobbyist registrant,” he said. “There is also going to be a lot of discussion about what is bundling.”

Under the plan approved Tuesday by the FEC, three types of committees would be required to report bundled contributions from lobbyists: authorized election committees of candidates for federal office (president, Senate and House); the political action committees (PACs) of federal officeholders; and national political party committees.

For the purpose of the law, the FEC defines “lobbyists” to encompass not only individuals registered as such under lobbying disclosure laws, but also organizations that employ in-house lobbyists — or lobbyist “registrants” in the legal lingo. Political action committees established or controlled by individual lobbyists or the corporations that are lobbyist registrants would also be included in this definition.

Contributions, according to the FEC, would be considered bundled if they were collected and forwarded to a campaign committee by a lobbyist, or if they were received from the contributor but credited to the lobbyist “through records, designations, or other means.”

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