FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20463

BEFORE THE FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION

In the Matter of ) 

 ) MUR 7181 

INDEPENDENT WOMEN’S VOICE ) 

 

STATEMENT OF REASONS OF VICE CHAIR ALLEN DICKERSON AND 

COMMISSIONER JAMES E. “TREY” TRAINOR, III 

We join in full the Statement of Reasons that has already been issued in this 

Matter.1 Dismissal under Heckler v. Chaney2 was an appropriate resolution to this 

case, which involved conduct dating back to the 2010 election cycle, well outside the 

five-year statute of limitations.3 The issues presented, however, are common ones. 

Knowing that they will arise in future Matters, we write separately to explain why 

the complaint should also have been dismissed on its merits.

Independent Women’s Voice (“IWV”) was accused of operating as an 

unregistered political committee under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, 

as amended (“the Act”)—a charge that turns on whether IWV’s major purpose during 

the relevant period was the nomination or election of federal candidates. In its 

analysis, the Commission’s Office of General Counsel (“OGC”) relied principally on 

isolated statements by IWV personnel to compensate for the undisputed fact that the 

majority of IWV’s spending did not go toward electing federal candidates to office.

Because OGC’s aggressive reading would effectively sideline the central 

protections of the major purpose test, we cannot agree with OGC’s analysis. And 

because IWV lacked the requisite major purpose, it was not, as a matter of law, a 

political committee.

 

1 Statement of Reasons of Vice Chair Dickerson, and Comm’rs Trainor and Cooksey, MUR 7181 

(Independent Women’s Voice).

2 470 U.S. 821 (1985).

3 28 U.S.C. § 2462.

MUR718100454
I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

The complaint in this Matter alleged that IWV failed to register and report as 

a political committee from 2010 to 2014. In course of its investigation, OGC reviewed 

IWV’s tax filings as well as the independent expenditure and electioneering 

communications reports it filed with the FEC, in accordance with the Act, when it 

conducted federal electoral advocacy. 

As OGC stated, “[b]y itself, such spending would not appear to indicate a major 

purpose of nominating or electing candidates. However, in addition, the available 

information also includes certain of IWV’s representatives’ own express statements 

concerning its activities directed toward the nomination or election of candidates.”4

OGC’s analysis emphasized that IWV spoke positively about its federal spending and 

bragged about its impact in federal elections. OGC suggested that as a result of “the 

direct manner in which IWV publicly claimed credit for the election of a federal 

candidate...IWV’s major purpose changed” to that of a political committee.5 

II. LEGAL ANALYSIS

The Act divides the world of federal campaign regulation into two groups:

political committees fully regulated by the Commission and other individuals and 

groups that incidentally engage in regulated political activity. The difference is not 

a mere technicality. Political committee status is burdensome and invasive. As the 

Supreme Court recognized in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 

political committees “are expensive to administer and subject to extensive 

regulations.”6

The Act defines a “political committee” to include any group of persons 

that within a calendar year receives more than $1,000 in contributions 

or makes more than $1,000 in expenditures.7 In Buckley v. Valeo,8 the 

Supreme Court held that the Act’s definition of “political committee” 

impermissibly swept within its ambit groups engaged primarily in issue 

discussion.9 For this reason, the Court narrowly construed the definition 

 

4 First General Counsel’s Report at 2.

5 Id. at 16. 

6 558 U.S. 310, 337 (2010). 

7 52 U.S.C. § 30101(4)(A).

8 424 U.S. 1 (1976) (per curiam) (citation supplied). 

9 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 79; (additional citation omitted). 

MUR718100455
of political committee to reach only groups that have as their major 

purpose the nomination or election of a federal candidate... 

Accordingly, the Commission may regulate entities as “political 

committees” under the Act only if they, first, meet the statutory 

definition of the term and then, second, have as their major purpose the 

nomination or election of a federal candidate.10 

Because IWV clearly spent more than $1,000 on qualifying expenditures, its 

status as a political committee turns on the major purpose test.

Congress did not update the definitions of “contribution,” “expenditure,” or 

“political committee” in the years after Buckley.11 Unless and until Congress enacts 

a new “political committee” definition with the “[p]recision of regulation” that “must 

be the touchstone in an area so closely touching our most precious freedoms,”12 it is 

our duty to enforce that statute pursuant to the Buckley Court’s narrowing 

constructions “through a case-by-case analysis of a specific organization’s conduct.”13 

While not the only metric,14 the simplest, cleanest, and fairest standard for 

determining whether an organization has the major purpose of nominating and 

electing federal candidates is to analyze its total spending on federal campaigns. After 

all, the Act has always defined political committees solely in monetary terms, as

groups receiving “contributions” and making “expenditures.”15 By this measure, IWV 

could not possibly be perceived as having the major purpose of electing federal 

candidates. Indeed, IWV never reported spending a majority of its outlays on any

politics at any level.16 One cannot truly say that IWV’s major purpose is electing any

candidates to office—let alone candidates in the federal races within our regulatory 

and statutory ambit. 

 

10 Statement of Reasons of Vice Chairman Petersen and Comm’r Hunter, MUR 6596 (Crossroads 

GPS) at 9 (internal citations in original, except where noted).

11 See McConnell v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 540 U.S. 93, 103 (2003).

12 NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 438 (1963).

13 Fed. Election Comm’n, “Political Committee Status,” 72 Fed. Reg. 5595, 5596 (Feb. 7, 2007). 

14 Id. 

15 52 U.S.C. 30101(4)(A); Buckley, 424 U.S. at 62 (“‘Political committee’ is defined in § 431(d) as a 

group of persons that receives ‘contributions’ or makes ‘expenditures’ of over $1,000 in a calendar 

year”).

16 Non-federal political spending is reported to the Internal Revenue Service by § 501(c)(4) 

organizations like IWV.

MUR718100456
Summary of IWV’s Spending (2010-2020)

Year

Total 

Spending 

Reported 

to IRS 

Political 

Expenditures 

Reported to 

IRS 

Political 

Expenditures 

Reported to 

IRS/Total 

Spending 

Reported to 

IRS 

Total 

Federal 

Political 

Spending 

Reported 

to FEC

Total 

Federal 

Political 

Spending 

Reported 

to FEC/

Total 

Spending 

Reported 

to IRS

2010 $1,986,937 $772,435 38.9%

$686,426

($387,251 in 

IEs; 

$299,175 in 

ECs)

34.5%

2011 $984,378 $349,001 35.5% $28,600 in 

IEs 2.9%

2012 $5,040,110 $382,542 7.6% $961,019 in 

IEs 19.1%

2013 $2,318,795 $958,770 41.3% $160,287 in 

IEs 6.9%

2014 $5,490,529 $747,359 13.6% $783,403 in 

IEs 14.3%

2016 $2,317,287 $12,900 .5%17 None N/A 

2018 $2,911,604 $271,520 9.3% None N/A 

2020 No Report 

Available

$803,350.04 

IE’s N/A 

As illustrated above, IWV’s spending alone could not possibly support a major 

purpose finding. Instead, OGC recommended that we find reason to believe that test 

was met based on observations from IWV speakers that its lawfully-reported federal

election activities were extensive and effective. These statements were routine and 

unsurprising; what political actor, even a part-timer, would publicly suggest its 

political influence was fleeting and irrelevant? 

 

17 We will never know for sure whether IWV’s hesitancy to engage in the 2016 election cycle was due 

to its knowledge of the Commission’s consideration of this Matter. If so, our failure to expeditiously 

dismiss the complaint imposed concrete and irreparable harm.

MUR718100457
More to the point, IWV’s total political spending—including non-federal 

activity over which we lack jurisdiction—never exceeded 42% of its budget. In most 

years it was far lower. And that high-water mark came in 2013, when just 6.9% of its 

activity was federal. The greatest share of IWV’s budget ever devoted to reportable 

federal activity was roughly a third, in 2010. In other words, this is not a case where 

an organization flew close to the sun, and where a swing of a few thousand dollars 

would make it a political committee. To believe IWV was a political committee would 

require one to assume that IWV cleverly hid its true purpose of electing federal 

candidates by annually burning somewhere between 60% and 100% of its annual 

budget on other priorities. We see no reason to credit that premise.

If a group spent 5% of its budget on independent expenditures in a 

congressional race in Florida, and 95% discussing Florida policy choices and lobbying 

state legislators in Tallahassee, we would quite properly conclude that the 

organization might be many things, but it was not a federal political committee. If its 

leadership nevertheless took every opportunity to brag about its participation in the 

federal race, and to suggest it was key to its preferred candidate’s victory, those 

statements would not alter the calculus. In our view, an organization’s revealed 

preferences, as exposed by the inescapable mathematical facts of its actual spending, 

are the surest guide to a group’s major purpose. Certainly, they are a more reliable 

lodestar than our necessarily subjective, and often contextless, reading of stray 

comments made to the press. 

CONCLUSION

Based on this record, IWV did not have as its major purpose the nomination or 

election of federal candidates and, therefore, was not a political committee under the 

Act. Accordingly, even if four commissioners had not voted to invoke our 

administrative discretion under Heckler v. Chaney, we would not have supported a 

reason to believe finding in this Matter.

_________________________________ _________________________ 

Allen Dickerson Date

Vice Chair

_________________________________ _________________________ 

James E. “Trey” Trainor, III Date

Commissioner 

May 10, 2021

May 10, 2021

MUR718100458