HE SURE DOESN'T WANT SERIOUS REGULATION UNTIL HE'S BEEN RE-ELECTED:

FEC Pick Raises Eyebrows (Shawn Zeller, 5/28/09, CQ)

When candidate Barack Obama decided last year that he was so flush with donations that he would spurn public financing for both the nomination and general election campaigns, he worried many of those who were trying to reduce the influence of big money on elections. Obama seemed to reassure them, though, by promising that if he became president he would push to fix the system.

By naming labor lawyer John Sullivan to the Federal Election Commission this month, however, Obama’s got the advocates of tough campaign finance enforcement fretting again.

“The gusto with which Mr. Sullivan has bashed important elements” of the 2002 campaign finance law “and repeatedly taken radical deregulatory positions does not inspire confidence,” says J. Gerald Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center in Washington.