Hans von Spakovsky...Buh-bye

From AJC's Political Insider, former Fulton County [GA] GOP chairman and DoJ voter suppression expert Hans von Spakovsky emailed his supporters on New Year's Eve to say good-bye:

“Today was my last official day as a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission,” he wrote. “The Senate officially adjourned today without acting on my nomination… I wanted to thank everyone for their support over the past two years while I was going through this confirmation battle. All of the telephone calls, emails and notes I received from people were great encouragement for me.”

Von Spakovsky attached an endorsement by the Wall Street Journal, though he added that “it did not help in the end in convincing the Democrats to vote to confirm me.”

Didn't help? Boo-hoo-hoo. I wonder why? The Political Insider goes on to describe a tit-for-tat:

Democratic senators blocked von Spakovsky’s appointment, over concern about his tenure in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, where he sided with efforts of Georgia Republicans to require that voters present a photo ID.

Republican senators retaliated by blocking the appointments of two Democrats to the FEC.

But, the Repubs didn't give reasons for their usual obstructionism -- or I missed it because most of what they say is BS -- whereas, von Spakovsky’s efforts to suppress Georgia voters is a very good reason to stop his appointment. IOW, he's a jerk.

Buh-bye and good riddance, Hans. Don't let the door hit you in the...

[That's all. No more after the jump.]

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FEC Makes It Easy For Citizen Journalists To Keep Track Of Presidential Campaign Finances

If you are like me, you are probably curious about how much money has been raised by your favorite presidential candidates in you home state or even your hometown. You are in luck. The FEC has posted a very user friendly map on their website showing nearly everything you might want to know about presidential campaign contributions.

For example, at the end of April John Edwards reported raising $5,400 in Eastern Jackson County and the surrounding counties with a 640XX zip codes out of the $30,740 donated to his campaign by Missouri residents.

As of the last filing Ron Paul had raised $7,950 from the good citizens of Missouri. Of that total $2,300 was contributed by an Independence man whose name is familiar to me.

Based on the current filings, the map tool is extremely powerful. It takes you right down to the donor level. The FEC promises to update the page to include 2nd quarter contributions shortly after July 15.

This is one Internet tool I intend to bookmark.

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Judicial Watch Reports That The Democrats Will Block Von Spakosky

Judicial Watch is reporting that top democrats are going to block Hans von Spakosky's nomination to the Federal Election Commission. According to Judicial Watch

Leading the chorus of opposition is California Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Rules Committee Chairwoman, who says it’s a “real problem” that the president’s Federal Election Commission nominee (Hans von Spakovsky) didn’t protect minority voters as a government attorney.

If true this might be an important development. It had been thought that Von Spakosky would survive because nominees to the FEC come in pairs, Republican and Democrat, and Democrats don't want to lose one of their nominees.

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Texas Attorney J. Gerald Herbert Opposes Hans Von Spakovsky

The Politico has reprinted a Democratic lawyer's letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) Chairperson, and Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) Ranking Member, of the Senate Rules Committee opposing Hans Von Spakovsky's permanent appointment to the Federal Election Commission.

The letter is signed by J. Gerald Herbert, a well known Texas attorney who represented Texas Democrats as they attempted to resist Tom Delay's redistricting plan. That redistricting plan, supported by the Bush DoJ, was ultimately overturned by the United States Supreme Court. Herbert outlines Von Spakovsky's role (along with that Bradley Schlozman) in that case, as well his endorsement of (over the opposition of the career staff) a voter ID in Georgia a federal judge easily determined to be an illegal Poll Tax.

You might want to read the entire letter, it provides lots of good information about Von Spakovsky. You are going to hear a lot about Hans all weekend.

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Von Spakovsky and Schlozman, The Tweedledee and Tweedledum of Republican Voter Suppression

Next week, unless he decides to quit, (my bet) there will be a confirmation hearing for Hans Von Spakovsky to the Federal Election Commission.

This afternoon the Brennen Center for Justice and the Lawyers Committee sponsored a press conference providing background information about Von Spakovsky's role in the Republican voter suppression campaign. The presser was held at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. The questions were answered by Joseph Rich, former chief of the Voting Rights Division, of the Civil Rights Division of the USDoJ's Professional Staff.

Unfortunately, I live a thousand miles away. As much as I would like I just couldn't attend. Because Von Spakovsky is the next big name on the voter suppression hit parade, I am looking for a complete transcript. We will hear a lot about Hans during the coming week.

Because they office in DC and they have a real budget, ThinkProgress was able to send a reporter. (Blue girl, you need to do something about that.)

The press conference took a 1/2 step away from Von Spakovsky when one of the reporters ask Rich questions about Bradley Schlozman and the ACORN indictments. You will recall that Schlozman is adamant that Craig Donsanto, the director of the Election Crimes branch in the Public Integrity section, ordered him to go forward with the indictments in the face of express directions published the manual Donsanto wrote. ThinkProgress is reporting this evening that Rich believes

“Schlozman’s the person who recommended those lawsuits, he pushed to get them, and I suspect [Schlozman] pressured Donsanto.”

According to ThinkProgress, Rich said, “I’ve heard that Schlozman talked to [Michael] Elston, which indicated he may have gone over Donsanto’s head to get approval.”

That kind of pressure might explain why Schlozman was so sure Donsanto would back him up even though everyone agrees the indictments flew in the face of Donsanto's own manual, DoJ rules and long standing tradition.

Whatever rock you turn over in this voter suppression mess you find Von Spakovsky and Schlozman. They are virtually Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I wonder how high up the food chain we have to go to find their master?

This has been an interesting exercise. I have learned how to spell some funny sounding German names.

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So Who Is Hans von Spakovsky, Anyway

Hans von Spakovsky's name has come up as one of the loyal Bushies who, along with Brad Schlozman, made sure that only the "right kind of people" were hired by the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. What is known about Hans.

Currently he is a member of the Federal Elections Commission. According to his official FEC bio

prior to his appointment, Commissioner von Spakovsky served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he provided expertise and advice on voting and election issues, including of the Help America Vote Act of 2002. . . . (before) entering public service, Commissioner von Spakovsky worked as a government affairs consultant, in a corporate legal department, and in private practice. He received a J.D. from the Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1984 and a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981. He is a member of the Georgia and Tennessee bars. He is a first-generation American whose parents immigrated to the United States in 1951. They met in a refugee camp as displaced persons after the end of World War II. He is originally from Huntsville, Alabama.

Boring stuff but his official bio hides much. Source Watch says Von Spakovsky was orignially appointed to the Commission on January 4, 2006, by President Bush as a recess appointment. A recess appointment? That's unusual. I wonder why?

Well it seems the administration probably thought he couldn't be confirmed by the Senate. His problems all go back to his ground breaking voter suppression work.

The Associated Press's Deb Reichmann reported January 5, 2006 that Senatory Ted Kennedy

"said von Spakovsky, a Justice Department lawyer who was Republican Party chairman in Fulton County, Ga., worked toward requiring Georgia voters to have a photo identification - a requirement critics said would harm black voters. Kennedy also contended that von Spakovsky was involved in a decision that rejected a recommendation of career Justice Department lawyers in a Texas redistricting case. Those lawyers had concluded that the redistricting plan violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it eliminated several districts where minorities had substantial voting power and illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power."

VoteTrustUSA's Warren Stewart wrote in December, 2005,

Most of the attention has focused on Republican Hans von Spakovsky, a lawyer in the Department of Justice Voting Section. Von Spakovsky has supported state programs to require voters to have photo identification and was one of the two Department of Justice lawyers who overruled the DOJ experts recommendation that the DOJ file a formal objection to Rep. Tom DeLay’s Texas redistricting plan under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Senator Ted Kennedy has said that von Spakovsky "may be at the heart of the political interference that is undermining the [Justice] Department's enforcement of federal civil laws."

On April 19, 2007 Digby wrote authoritatively about von Spakovsky in a piece entitled Hans Across America .

Von Spakovsky is not just another Atlanta lawyer. He had for years been involved with a GOP front group called the "Voter Integrity Project" (VIP) which was run by none other than Helen Blackwell, wife of notorious conservative operative Morton Blackwell. (Many of you will remember him as the guy who handed out the "purple heart" bandages at the 2004 GOP convention but he's actually much better known for years of running the dirty tricks school "The Leadership Institute" and is even credited with coining the name "Moral Majority." Let's just say he's been a playah in GOP circles for a long time --- and the VIP is one of his projects.

Digby's long article continues:

I'm sure everyone is aware by now that the recent study by the NY Times pretty much takes voter fraud off the table as anything but a partisan Republican tool for suppressing the Democratic vote:

Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Frankly you had to be something of an historical illiterate not to recognize from the beginning that these folks are up to the same tricks they've been using for decades. They tried mightily, with everything they had, the federal government, the Republican Lawyers Association, the country awash in patriotic paranoia, and they still couldn't prove this case --- even crookedly they couldn't do it. In fact, their insistence on finding it where there was none is what has caused their whole edifice to crumble.

He concludes by quoting J.Gerald Herbert's February 10, 2007, article entitled So exactly where were you, Hans von Spakovsky, on the nights in question?

But even putting aside his controversial tenure at DOJ, von Spakovsky’s performance at the FEC over the last year independently raises questions of whether he is worthy of Senate confirmation. His comments at FEC meetings have often been caustic and extraneous to the issue at hand. He has consistently scoffed at the spirit of campaign finance laws, thumbing his nose at the law as he seeks to help create routes of circumvention. He even accuses those reformers who seek regulation of the role of money in our political process as attempting to take us back to the days of the Alien and Sedition Acts. This is an easy accusation to make, and von Spakovsky has employed it a number of times, and it certainly is easier to attack those he disagrees with rather than to explain principled reasons for his own actions.

The Senate Rules Committee hearings will begin soon. When they do, the American people have the right to know all the details of von Spakovsky’s roles in both the Texas and Georgia matters, and his handling of FEC matters as a recess appointee. That record, if compiled, will make the vote on his confirmation quite easy.

If you want to learn more about Hans service to the Bush Administration and Republican Voter Suppression read Herbert's entire article. It is a sorry tale, indeed. Then again, what do you expect from a loyal Bushie.

Note: Recess appointments don't last forever. As the Herbert quote indicates, he has now been nominated for a permanent appointment, his nomination is being considered by the Senate's Committee on Rules and Administration for a term expiring April 30, 2011. I wonder how his nomination is going to be received.

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FEC Drops Investigation of Renzi After He Pays Taxes And Agrees To Fine

Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP reports that

Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi avoided federal campaign penalties by paying $323,830 in back taxes last year to reassure regulators that loans to his political committee came from his own pocket.

The Federal Election Commission, in documents made public Tuesday, said it decided to take no further action against Renzi regarding the source of the loans to his 2001-2002 congressional campaign.

Renzi, a Republican, did agree to pay a $25,000 fine for unrelated reporting violations during that election cycle.

Apparently the FBI is still investigating his questionable land deal.

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