Four liberal campaign finance groups are petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to close a loophole used by Senate Republicans to save millions on TV advertising, Politico reported Thursday.
Watchdogs End Citizens United Action Fund, the Campaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Public Citizen sent a letter to the FCC on Wednesday asking the agency to confirm its rules on lower advertising rates for legally qualified candidates only, not joint fundraising committees.
At issue is that Senate Republicans over the summer began using joint fundraising committees to run traditional campaign ads but with a fundraising tag at the end to garner lowest-unit charges (LUC) for the ad, according to Politico. The lower broadcast rates are reserved for legally qualified candidates.
Democrats took their case to the Federal Election Commission, which last week deadlocked at 3-3 over the practice, effectively allowing it to continue, Politico reported last week.
The watchdogs are now taking their case to the FCC.
In the letter, the groups asked the FCC to "confirm that a candidate must pay for at least 50% of an ad to trigger the favorable access and treatment and advertising rates."
"Around the country, a disturbing trend has arisen on the eve of the election: the National Republican Senatorial Campaign ('NRSC') and Senate candidates have been using joint fundraising committees whereby the NRSC has been paying the LUC to fund nearly all of the costs of television ads that have no other purpose but to advocate the election or defeat of candidates. The NRSC has been doing this by advancing funds to the joint fundraising committees to cover the costs of the ads," the letter said.
"While the FCC has never explicitly stated how much of an ad needs to be paid for by a candidate to qualify for the LUC, surely it must be more than a small fraction of the advertisement's total. … [W]e propose that the candidate's principal campaign committee should fund at least 50% of the ad," the groups wrote.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said last week it would "utilize the same tactics" in the final weeks of campaigning, according to the report.