President Biden Nominates New FEC Commissioner
On February 3, 2022, the Senate received President Biden’s nomination of Dara Lindenbaum to serve as a new Commissioner of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). She would replace Steven T. Walther, who has served as a Commissioner since 2006 and is currently the FEC’s Vice Chair. Ms. Lindenbaum would serve in a seat designated for a Democratic commissioner.
Ms. Lindenbaum currently is a Member of at the Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock, P.C. law firm in Washington, D.C., where she has represented clients in the election law field. The focus of her work is counseling candidates, political action committees, nonprofits, ballot measure campaigns and corporations on election law.
Before working at Sandler Reiff, Ms. Lindenbaum worked as associate counsel for the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She has also worked with several political causes including serving as General Counsel to Stacey Abrams’s current and 2018 campaigns for Governor of Georgia and working as a development assistant for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. She previously served as a law clerk for former FEC Commissioner Cynthia Bauerly.
She holds a bachelor’s degree from Northeastern University and a J.D. from the George Washington University Law School.
Commissioner Walther is an Independent who would often vote with the Democratic commissioners on substantive matters, so Lindenbaum’s nomination is not expected to change the partisan dynamics of the FEC. Under the law, no more than three commissioners can be from the same party of the six-person body and four votes are required to reach a quorum and to take regulatory actions. There is no tie-breaking process for votes that end in a 3-3 tie.
See here for Dara Lindenbaum’s LinkedIn profile.
Click here for a link to her FEC nomination.
Click here for a link to an interview she did with the George Washington Law School.
