For Immediate Release Contact: Bob Biersack
March 8, 2007 Michelle Ryan
George Smaragdis
FEC ISSUES ADVISORY OPINION, APPROVES AUDITS OF KUCINICH AND LAROUCHE, AND LAUNCHES NEW INTERNET TOOL
At its open meeting today, the Federal Election Commission approved an Advisory Opinion concluding that the Arizona Libertarian Party, Inc. qualifies as a state party committee. The FEC reached this conclusion because the Arizona Libertarian Party:
- qualifies as a political party,
- is part of the official party structure, and
- is responsible for the day-to-day operations of a party at a state level.
The FEC also today approved audits of the 2004 Presidential campaigns of Dennis Kucinich and Lyndon LaRouche.
The FEC determined that Dennis Kucinich for President, Inc. must repay $137,358 to the U.S. Treasury. The vast majority of the repayment amount stems from Congressman Kucinich’s use of public funds to continue to campaign after after his date of ineligibility, March 4, 2004, until he ended his campaign on July 29, 2004. Congressman Kucinich received a total of $3,291,963 in matching funds.
The FEC determined that LaRouche in 2004 must repay $3,219 to the U.S. Treasury. The repayment stems from $3,219 in checks issued by LaRouche in 2004 that were not cashed by recipients. LaRouche in 2004 has already submitted its repayment to the U.S. Treasury. Lyndon LaRouche received a total of $1,456,019 in matching funds.
Under the federal campaign finance law, all publicly funded Presidential campaigns are audited in order to ensure that public funds were spent for permissible campaign expenses and to determine any repayments of public funds to the U.S. Treasury. Repayment determinations are common.
Finally, the FEC announced that a new tool for searching information about Advisory Opinions is now available at www.fec.gov. An Advisory Opinion is an official Commission response to a question relating to the application of the Federal campaign finance law to a specific, factual situation.
The new process allows for full text searches of all Commission Advisory Opinions issued since the beginning of 1997. The FEC will also add additional material from earlier years as it updates the program with newly issued opinions. Searches can also be made using the name of the requestor and other information about opinions. When a specific opinion is selected, links to all related materials (e.g., the original request, any comments made by others, etc.) are also provided, making the system a quick and comprehensive research tool. The project to develop the new Advisory Opinion search was led by Jennifer Boyt, Richard Ewell, and Alec Palmer.
Agendas and documents from this and other recent Commission meetings may be found on the FEC web site at http://www.fec.gov/agenda/agendas.shtml.
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