In December 2008, six weeks after Barack Obama was elected president, I participated in a panel on campaign finance at the annual conference of the Council of Governmental Ethics Laws in Chicago. COGEL is the membership organization for federal and state government ethics regulators and administrators. Its meetings are an excellent opportunity for lawyers who practice in political law to get advance notice of the issues that are on the minds of the government officials who regulate our clients.
The topic was "Where Does the Money Come From? The Methods of Financing and Sometimes Regulating Political Speech." The other panelists included a commissioner from the Federal Election Commission, a lawyer from a campaign finance reform group based in Washington, and the now infamous Lois Lerner. Lernerwho has become almost a household name this past weekwas (and still is, as of this writing) director of Exempt Organizations for the Internal Revenue Service.
