House Passes Campaign Finance Reform Bill Banning ‘Soft Money’

The House on Thursday thwarted last-ditch efforts to derail a major campaign finance reform bill, giving the measure strong support in one last vote that sent it to the Senate.

The bill, written by Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.), would ban “soft money” donations: unregulated and unlimited contributions from corporations, unions, special interest groups and individuals to political parties that were at the heart of fund-raising abuses in the 1996 presidential campaign. The bill was approved in an initial vote Tuesday, 237 to 186. On Thursday, its backers defeated a competing, narrower measure offered by first-term Republicans and Democrats.

Under complicated procedures adopted for the debate on campaign finance reform, one final vote was required on the Shays-Meehan bill. It passed this second time, 252 to 179.

Its prospects in the Senate, which is recessed until late August, seem bleak. The Senate killed a similar measure early this year and its Republican leaders have shown no desire to revisit the issue.

But Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), a champion of campaign finance reform, vowed “to ensure that the Senate will not dodge its responsibility.” And representatives of citizens advocacy groupssaid they will lobby GOP senators who they believe might change their minds.