‘Increasingly Untenable’: 12 Former FEC Leaders Demand Senate Action on Stalled-Out Agency

A dozen former Federal Election Commission commissioners — all Republicans — are urging Senate Majority Leader John Thune to confirm two languishing commissioner nominees before January, when Democrats will control the Senate.

The nominations of Andrew Woodson and Ashley Stow have stalled for months, with senators citing “paperwork issues” and the prolonged medical absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican chair of the Senate Rules Committee.

The FEC, meanwhile, effectively sat out the midterm elections, unable to authorize investigations, audits, fines or legal opinions since May 2025 because it lacked the minimum four commissioners necessary to conduct high-level business.

The former commissioners called the current situation “increasingly untenable” and a “particularly serious problem,” citing a suspected hacking that took the FEC filing system offline for more than 24 hours last week, just days before Tuesday’s election.

The group also warned it might be too late to get their nominations through if Republicans wait until January, when Democrats take control of the Senate.

“If the new Democratic majority takes control of nominations before these Republican vacancies are filled, the opportunity to restore the Commission with two highly qualified nominees may be delayed — or President Trump’s nominations might be thwarted indefinitely,” the former Republican commissioners wrote in a letter to Thune on Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota). (Aaron Schwartz/Sipa USA via AP)

A spokesperson for Thune did not immediately respond to requests for comment. David Popp, McConnell’s spokesperson, texted The Washington Sun, “If I have anything to share I’ll be sure to let you know.”

In February, after more than nine months of inaction, Trump nominated Stow and Woodson to fill two of the four empty seats on the FEC.

Woodson is a lawyer at Wiley Rein and former counsel to one of the former FEC commissioners who signed the letter, Lee Goodman, who’s now a partner at Dhillon Law Group.

Stow previously worked for another signatory, former FEC Commissioner Trey Trainor, who is also at Dhillon and left the FEC in late 2025 to unsuccessfully run for Congress in Texas.

Trey Trainor (center) and Allen Dickerson (right), then commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, discuss the agency’s pending loss of a quorum on April 30, 2025, as Commissioner Shana Broussard looks on. (Dave Levinthal/Washington Sun)

Other Republican commissioners who signed onto the letter include Sean Cooksey, a managing director at BGR Group who left the FEC in January 2025 to join the Trump administration as counsel to Vice President JD Vance, and Allen Dickerson, who left the FEC a few months later in April 2025, costing the commission its quorum.

Bradley Smith, chairman and founder of the nonprofit Institute for Free Speech, and Dave Mason, general counsel and chief compliance officer at Aristotle, also signed onto the letter, as did Thomas Josefiak and Matthew Petersen of Holtzman Vogel, Michael Toner of Wiley, Caroline Hunter, Hans von Spakovsky, and Darryl Wold.

“A bipartisan agency deliberately designed to require four votes cannot fulfill its statutory role with only two Commissioners,” the former commissioners wrote. “These nominations therefore present a straightforward opportunity for the Republican Party.”