State House lacks will to lift fundraising ban

Because of a lack of support for the measure, the Arkansas House will not vote Monday on suspending the rule that bans its members from fundraising during the legislative fiscal session, several sources said Friday.

A special subcommittee of the House Rules Committee voted Thursday to recommend suspending the rule before the fiscal session starts Monday and to study changing it before the regular legislative session in 2015. Speaker of the House Davy Carter, R-Cabot, said Friday that he did not plan to schedule a vote on the matter.

House and Senate members are banned under chamber rules from receiving campaign donations directly before, during or directly after a regular legislative session. But only House members are barred from campaign fundraising during special and fiscal sessions.

Carter said Friday that he told supporters of the measure that he would not schedule a caucus before the noon start of the fiscal session Monday unless 51 members supported requesting the vote. Carter said the suspension proposal “was no longer being pursued.”

House Majority Leader Bruce Westerman had asked for the ethics rule to be reviewed, saying it might be unconstitutional. Westerman, a Hot Springs Republican, is one of two current House members seeking congressional seats in this year’s elections.

Last month, he gave the House Rules Committee a copy of a 1996 Federal Election Commission advisory opinion stating that federal campaign-finance laws pre-empt state campaign-finance laws from dealing with limitations on fundraising by candidates for federal office. Westerman asked the committee to interpret whether the Arkansas House’s fundraising restrictions applied to House members seeking federal or state constitutional offices, since federal law contains no similar prohibition on fundraising.

Rules Committee Chairman Stephanie Malone, R-Fort Smith, she did not think the proposal would move forward.

“At this point, I don’t think it’s going to happen,” she said. “I think the agreement was to see if there was overwhelming support for it. I mean, we moved from a motion to change the rules last week, to a motion to suspend them Thursday. I think some people were still trying to understand what that would mean, and I don’t think the support was there.”

K. Ryan James, a spokesman for Westerman’s campaign for the 4th Congressional District, said Westerman would not challenge the House rule during the fiscal session.

“Rep. Westerman appreciates the bipartisan work on this issue, and we appreciate the deliberations that the bipartisan members of [the]Rules Committee undertook,” James said. “It is our plan to follow the rules of the Arkansas House and move forward to the fiscal session.”

Westerman isn’t the only legislator seeking a seat in Washington. Rep. Ann Clemmer, R-Benton, announced her intention to run for the 2nd Congressional District seat.

At least two Republican House members who are candidates for other offices confirmed that they would not vote for the rules suspension if it went before the House. Republican Reps. Andrea Lea of Russellville - who is running for state auditor - and Terry Rice of Waldron - who is running against Sen. Bruce Holland, R-Greenwood, for the District 9 Senate seat - said Thursday that they would not accept campaign contributions during the fiscal session even if the rule was suspended.

The original proposal to allow candidates for federal office to raise money during the fiscal session would have affected Clemmer and Westerman, but the ban would have remained for the other members. Suspending the rule would have meant that any member, regardless of the office he sought, could have accepted contributions during the session.

At a caucus meeting, it takes a “yes” vote by two thirds of the state representatives present to suspend the rules. Changing the rules requires a two-thirds vote of the entire House membership.

Democratic House Leader Greg Leding said he heard about the suspension plan and polled other House members Friday morning to see if there was support for the measure. He said there was a mixed response from both sides of the aisle, but the majority of people he spoke to were not supportive of it.

“As of about a half hour ago, talking with a couple of my colleagues, it’s been decided that we are not going to try to suspend the rules,” he said early Friday afternoon. “There wasn’t really anybody who was eager to do it. I don’t think anybody would have been comfortable doing it. I just don’t think the votes were there.”

Several legislators said Friday that they still feel that there is a need to reconsider the rule, noting that it hasn’t always been consistently enforced. The House suspended the rule in 2003 at the request of former Rep. Jan Judy, a Democrat who ran in the 3rd Congressional District, but rejected suspending the rule in 2010 when former House Speaker Robert Wills announced his Democratic campaign for the 2nd Congressional District seat. Neither candidate was elected.

“It’s not something that’s going to go away right now, or something that will pop up again when we’re in a fiscal session and there’s an emergency situation,” said Rep. Mary Broadaway, D-Paragould. “I think the Rules Committee will meet to deliberate on this rule and others, to look at those more carefully. The dynamics between the regular session and the fiscal session are so different, but in a lot of ways the rules are out of sync.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/08/2014

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