Trump moved federal jobs out of D.C. during his first term and promised more of the same while campaigning.
WASHINGTON—Federal Election Commissioner Trey Trainor has a vision, and it’s outside the Beltway.
“I think everything that we do can be done, frankly, anywhere in the United States that has a decent internet connection,” he told The Epoch Times.
Trainor, a Republican appointed during the first Trump administration, wants to move the headquarters of his campaign finance and election oversight agency away from Washington, D.C., the seat of federal power in the American political system.
The idea is in line with President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge on the campaign trail to relocate up to 100,000 federal positions out of D.C. During his first term, he moved the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and other elements of the federal bureaucracy out of the capital.
Trainor said his proposal squares with the ambitions of the Department of Government Oversight, or DOGE, the Elon Musk- and Vivek Ramaswamy-led, time-limited commission that Trump has tasked to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.”
The idea, Trainor said, has “DOGE potential.”
Rent and the Cost of Living
Trainor cited expensive D.C. rent and the local cost of living, which boosts the paychecks of government workers. Trainor pointed out that FEC employees are already entitled to work from home much of the time, thanks to their union.
The commissioner said the move out of expensive D.C. could increase the number of people interested in joining the FEC.
“People may be interested in doing work in places that are probably a little easier to access,” he said.
Karen Sebold, a professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, told The Epoch Times that much of the agency’s work now occurs online.
“They might be one of the easier ones to relocate,” she said of the FEC.
Sebold said decentralization could open up federal jobs to more and different applicants than are found in the nation’s capital.
“By dispersing the agencies around the country, you’re certainly broadening the pool of people who might work for those agencies,” she said.
