FEC Member Resigns, Deepening Crisis at Watchdog Agency

The Federal Election Commission is losing another member.

Commissioner Trey Trainor, the only remaining Republican on the commission, told the Washington Examiner last week that he would step down from his post early next month and is considering a run for the House seat being vacated by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas.

Trainor’s coming resignation will leave the FEC with just two sitting members, current Chair Shana Broussard and Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum, both of whom are Democrats.

The FEC has seen its membership disintegrate since the beginning of the year, starting with the resignation of Republican Commissioner Sean Cooksey. President Donald Trump then fired Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub in February. A third commissioner, Republican Allen Dickerson stepped down in April at the end of his term. 

Trump has yet to announce any nominees to fill the vacancies. 

Since Dickerson’s resignation earlier this year, the FEC has been shy of the four-member quorum it needs to conduct high-level business, like holding meetings, issuing advisory opinions and taking enforcement actions for campaign finance violations, leaving the commission effectively paralyzed and facing a growing backlog of cases. 

A Growing Backlog

As of April, there were 161 pending enforcement matters before the FEC. In an interview with Campaigns & Elections over the summer, Broussard acknowledged the challenges at the agency stemming from the absence of a quorum, but said she was hopeful that Trump would soon nominate new members so the commission could get back to work.

Weintraub, the Democratic former commissioner who now works as a senior fellow at End Citizens United, accused Trump of intentionally withholding nominations for the FEC in order to prevent the commission from enforcing campaign finance laws. 

“With just two members and no nominations to fill the vacant seats, President Trump is intentionally sidelining the nation’s campaign finance watchdog,” Weintraub said in a statement. “Restoring the quorum is the bare minimum to have any safeguards against corruption.”

To be sure, it’s not the first time that the FEC has been left quorumless. The commission found itself with just three members in 2020. By the time it regained a quorum, it faced a backlog of more than 450 cases, which took months to work through. 

Trainor had previously considered leaving the commission earlier this year to run for Texas attorney general, but ultimately declined to do so, saying that he had a “duty to continue serving” on the FEC to prevent the commission from becoming a “partisan tool.”

“We have a responsibility to ensure that it remains a fair, balanced forum for enforcing campaign finance law and protecting the rights of all Americans to participate in the political process,” Trainor said in a statement at the time. While he has not yet committed to running for Roy’s House seat, Trainor told the Washington Examiner that he is “seriously evaluating” a campaign.