Campaign Reform Picks Up Steam

Sen. John McCain’s presidential candidacy may have fizzled, but his big issue--campaign finance reform--has gained new momentum in Congress, albeit in diluted form.

A compromise measure crafted by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) is scheduled for a committee hearing Wednesday amid signs that it is picking up support that eluded McCain’s efforts. Senate floor action could come as early as mid-May.

Hagel offered his proposal in November after the Senate rejected a more sweeping measure sought by McCain (R-Ariz.) and his co-sponsor, Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), but the initial reaction was lukewarm.

The new interest in Hagel’s proposal, Senate strategists said, reflects a recognition among some GOP leaders that McCain’s showing in the recent primaries has put pressure on the party to support some form of campaign finance reform.

“Overall, the environment is going to be one where [Senate Republicans] are going to want to be behind something,” said one Senate strategist. Hagel’s bill, the strategist added, “may be seen as doable. If so, it will have a pretty good chance.”

McCain emerged as Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s major challenger for the GOP presidential nomination, in part because of a campaign message that spotlighted campaign finance reform. His relentless attacks on what he called Washington’s “iron triangle” of money, lobbyists and legislation helped him attract fervent backing before Bush overwhelmed him in a series of primaries earlier this month.

After McCain’s departure from the race, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore embraced campaign finance reform as a priority--another possible spur for Republicans to back Hagel’s bill and steal some of the vice president’s campaign thunder.

By any measure, the Hagel bill is not near as tough as the McCain-Feingold proposal. The cornerstone of McCain’s bill was its ban on “soft money” donations: the largely unregulated contributions to political parties that now often swell to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Hagel’s bill would limit these donations to a cumulative $60,000 for each individual, corporation or labor union. In 1998--the last full year for which such statistics are available--about 133 people gave $60,000 or more in soft-money contributions. Federal Election Commission reports also show that Carl H. Lindner, chairman of the Cincinnati-based American Financial Group, gave a combined $645,000 in soft money to Democratic and Republican committees in 1999 while the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the largest union for government workers, donated $1.38 million to the Democrats.

The Hagel measure also would toughen requirements for national parties to disclose the names of donors promptly--and for television and radio stations to make public the names of those buying air time. But the regulations would not be as stiff as those McCain sought.

Nevertheless, some McCain backers agreed that, if the Hagel bill should become law, it would mark a step toward the kind of toughening of campaign finance laws that they want to see.

Hagel and his allies conceded that the outlook still is uncertain. Although Senate Rules Committee Chairman Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) endorsed the Nebraskan’s bill last fall, it would not take many amendments toughening it to turn him into an opponent.

Democrats also could upset Hagel’s apple cart by trying to make the bill a vehicle for floor amendments designed to promote the Democratic political agenda--on education, gun control and other controversial issues. Republicans then likely would close ranks against the bill.

But the measure’s prospects are being buoyed by other factors. Chief among them is that it is not McCain’s bill, making it easier for McConnell--the Arizonan’s longtime nemesis--and other GOP conservatives to support it.

Even so, Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist, said the Hagel measure’s major failing may be precisely that, as a compromise, it does not go far enough for the reformers, the opponents or those in between.

“The biggest danger is that this will be criticized to death from all sides,” Sabato said. “Democrats won’t like it because they’ll say it does not go far enough. Republican traditionalists will think it goes too far. The rest will be lukewarm.”

Sabato and many other analysts believe that much of the Hagel bill’s fate may be determined not so much on the Senate floor as in Austin, Texas, in the headquarters of the Bush campaign, and in McCain’s private office in the Russell Senate Office Building.

If Bush signals that he supports the Hagel legislation, Senate GOP leaders will be able to rally Republicans in favor of it, these analysts said. If he is against it, the measure likely would die. Similarly, McCain could drive a spike into Hagel’s bill by vigorously opposing it.