Campaign Finance Bill Clears Senate Hurdle

A landmark revision of campaign finance laws neared final approval in the Senate after proponents won a critical vote Thursday that tested their coalition’s goal of banning huge political donations.

Lawmakers on both sides of the issue now say that the Senate is likely on Monday to approve legislation to stamp out unlimited contributions to political parties known as “soft money.” The bill would also ease fund-raising rules for congressional and presidential candidates. And it would regulate political advertising by independent advocacy groups.

In another key development, President Bush said Thursday that he is prepared to support a campaign finance bill if he is sent a measure that “improves the system.”

“I look forward to signing a good piece of legislation,” Bush said.

Though Bush stopped short of endorsing the Senate legislation, his statement was the strongest signal yet that he would not necessarily veto a bill with a soft-money ban, even though he has not backed that proposal.

The anticipated Senate approval of the most comprehensive campaign finance reform since 1974 would send the bill to the House, where similar legislation won broad bipartisan approval twice in recent years.

But leaders of the House Republican majority, who control the chamber’s agenda, are pledging to fight the bill with all their legislative might. And some leaders of the House Democratic minority are also voicing concerns about provisions in the Senate bill that they fear could hurt their party.

“Look, we’re going to have a fight in the House,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the bill’s chief sponsor. “We’re going to work with our House colleagues. It’s not going to be easy . . . but we are guardedly confident that we will pass it through the House of Representatives. And we are pleased that the president said that he’d like to sign a bill.”

If the bill becomes law, the ban of soft-money contributions would wipe out a financial wellspring that provided nearly $500 million to the Democratic and Republican parties in the last election cycle. Many of these donors, who include major corporations and unions, as well as wealthy individuals, wrote checks exceeding $100,000.

McCain and his legislative partner, Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), say the ban on such contributions is needed because this flood of money in politics has fed a public perception that lawmakers are in thrall to deep-pocket donors.

They also argue that the soft-money system has made a mockery of federal campaign contribution laws enacted in 1974 after the Watergate scandal that limit donations directly to candidates for federal offices. The limits do not apply to soft-money donations because the parties do not use the money on explicit efforts to elect or defeat candidates. The current limit on individual donations to candidates is $1,000 per election.

But critics of the McCain-Feingold bill say the soft-money ban will do little more than force political funds out of well-established and heavily regulated national parties and into shell organizations hidden from public scrutiny. They also complain that the ban represents an unconstitutional infringement of 1st Amendment free-speech rights.

On Thursday, the proposed ban survived what appeared to be its last significant challenge before Senate passage. On a 57-43 vote, the Senate rejected an amendment that sought to have the soft-money ban rescinded if federal courts were to strike down other provisions of McCain-Feingold as unconstitutional.

The vote was considered crucial because, should the bill become law, court challenges are a virtual certainty. Indeed, one of the measure’s leading foes, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), has already said he would lead such a challenge.

Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who sponsored the amendment, said it was needed in case the courts strike down the bill’s restrictions on advertising by independent advocacy groups, such as unions, corporate groups, the National Rifle Assn. or abortion rights organizations. If the ban on soft-money contributions remained on the books, he argued, such groups would come to overshadow “the voice of the candidates” and the political parties.

But McCain and Feingold, as they have throughout nearly two weeks of Senate debate, held their coalition together in the face of what they viewed as the last remaining major threat to Senate passage of the overall bill.

Before the vote on the amendment, Feingold said: “This is the soft-money vote. This is where the Senate takes its stand.”

In voting to kill the amendment, McCain and Feingold were joined by 43 Democratic colleagues and 12 Republicans in it--among them Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California.

Some of the GOP opposition to the amendment was expected. But some Republicans who broke with party leaders to vote against the amendment were more surprising, including Sens. Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Mike DeWine of Ohio.

One Democrat who voted against McCain and Feingold on the amendment was Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey. He warned of profound consequences if a future Supreme Court decision guts portions of the bill but leaves other parts standing.

“These are a series of reforms inexorably dependent on each other,” Torricelli said. “If one or more is removed, the nation will have a radically different campaign finance system, and our system of choosing candidates, and even the people that we elect, will be altered.”

After the vote, McConnell conceded that he expected the bill would pass the Senate. “There’s no suspense about that. The outcome is not in doubt.”

But he derided the measure as “stunningly stupid.” He said lawmakers backing McCain and Feingold had failed to see its long-range consequences. He argued that, under the bill, parties would have less money to help challengers while independent groups will gain even more clout.

He also argued that it would not accomplish its stated aim. If the bill becomes law, McConnell said, “I guarantee you, there won’t be a penny less spent on politics in America. McCain-Feingold won’t take money out of politics. It just takes the parties out of politics.”

In years past, McConnell and GOP leaders had spearheaded successful filibusters that blocked various proposals by McCain and Feingold from coming to an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.

But foes of McCain and Feingold were forced to relent after elections last year boosted the number of senators who back the bill.

Pressure for reform first mounted after the emergence of fund-raising scandals in the 1996 presidential campaign. More recently, the soft-money issue surfaced as part of the controversy over President Clinton’s last-minute pardon of wealthy financier Marc Rich, who had fled the country rather than face tax evasion and mail-fraud charges. Denise Rich, the businessman’s former wife, who lobbied for the pardon, contributed more than $1 million to Democratic Party committees during the Clinton presidency, much of it in soft money.

McConnell attributed the Senate’s action to the bad name soft money has gained. “The feeling was we needed to cleanse ourselves of this ‘evil,’ ” he said.

The expected Senate approval of the McCain-Feingold bill will culminate two weeks of freewheeling debate that broke from the more scripted discussions that usually occur. Republican and Democratic leaders simply opened up the floor to amendments and let senators go at it.

As a result, the Senate weighed amendments on a plethora of perceived ailments in modern politics. It adopted a proposal to help candidates of modest means raise money to compete with self-financed multimillionaires.

It moved to clamp down on the cost of political advertising on television, impose new restrictions on attack ads and require virtually instant disclosure of mountains of federal political records.

And, on Wednesday, the Senate worked through one of the most difficult issues: how high to raise federal contribution limits on individual donations that have been unchanged since 1974. Eventually, it agreed to double the limit on individual donations to candidates, to $2,000 per election, and raise to $37,500 the amount individuals may give to candidates and parties each year--a 50% increase.

“This was the Senate at its best,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a McCain-Feingold supporter. “Every time things were in jeopardy, the senators rose to the occasion, and that’s what the Senate is supposed to be all about.”

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Times staff writers Greg Miller and Janet Hook contributed to this story.

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