All from my books Finding Liberty as seen at 3mpub.com. You are free to obtain a copy of this book and circulate it to your fellow Libertarians.
Chapter Eleven
The Browne Campaign and the Federal Elections Commission Because this Chapter is a bit dry, I open with a:
Summary
Under Federal Law, Presidential candidates who have raised at least $5000 are required to file financial reports with the Federal Election Commission. Who is a Presidential candidate? Federal Law provides the legal definition. When did Browne become a candidate? There are rationales for identifying several slightly different dates as the day on which Browne truly became a Presidential candidate under Federal Law. It is extremely difficult to avoid the conclusion that Harry Browne had become a candidate by early 1999. Browne’s formal declaration, an act with no legal meaning, was not made until February 2000.
The Browne 2000 campaign refused to file financial reports with the Federal Election Commission until Spring 2000. Browne claimed that he was declining to file in order to permit litigation against Federal Election Laws. In 2002, the FEC finally cited him for a late filing, and fined his campaign. His campaign paid immediately.
By delaying its filings until May 2000, the Browne campaign gained an enormous political advantage over its opponents. The Browne campaign’s alleged strong points included its early start, its legions of volunteers, and its huge campaign warchest. Because it did not file with the FEC, Harry Browne’s campaign was able to hide from the Libertarian public a modest difficulty: its fabled campaign warchest was a myth. Throughout the campaign, the Browne campaign was almost, but never quite, broke.
Details
We have reached 2000, the Presidential election year. We’ll now take a seeming detour. We’re going to discuss Federal Law as it relates to Presidential election campaigns. The seeming detour is not really a detour. Election law was central to the 2000 nomination campaign.
Federal Law imposes major burdens on every candidate for President. It limits contributions. It affects spending plans. Most importantly for the discussion here, Federal Law requires Presidential campaigns to file public reports on where they raised their money, how they spent their money, and how much money they have.
These requirements apply to Presidential campaigns, not to the man on the street. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has no mandate to inspect the private doings of private citizens. However, once you become a candidate for President, the FEC puts a variety of requirements on your cash transfers, and requires that many of them be reported in a public forum. Public reporting requirements put serious constraints on real campaigns. Your press secretary may talk a good line about fundraising, but if your FEC reports show that your cash flow has withered, your campaign may well soon follow. If you don’t believe me, ask some of the Republican also-rans of 1999 and 2000, not to mention 2020.
FEC Financial Report requirements directly affected the Browne Campaign. Reporting requirements restricted how the campaign could present itself to the world, and reasonably should have affected the campaign’s tactics. Reporting requirements were a very real threat to the campaign’s success.
Recall that the Browne campaign’s basic plan included a campaign warchest: $1,000,000 in the bank by January 2000 for a campaign kickoff. The Browne campaign’s aura of inevitability rested in substantial part on the impression that it had vast cash reserves, so it could do things that other campaigns could not. After all, in late 1999 the Browne campaign announced that it had set aside $750,000 to cover all technical expenses through election day, enough to ensure that every penny afterwards donated to the campaign could go to real campaigning. The campaign warchest appeared to be a big advantage of Browne over his competitors.
Alas, the Browne campaign didn’t have the money. As was eventually revealed, it had not one million dollars, but only a tiny fraction of that amount. However, at the start of 2000, the Browne campaign’s actual financial status was the Campaign’s most closely held secret.
