An Unfinished Battle

Campaign finance reform scored a historic victory two weeks ago when the House of Representatives approved the Shays-Meehan bill banning soft money, but new dangers lurk in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle had promised to bring Shays-Meehan to the floor as quickly as possible, but the pace has already slowed as the Senate takes up the energy bill. He and other supporters need to make sure that campaign reform doesn’t lose momentum and is passed immediately.

As public outrage over the Enron scandal shows, voters want drastic changes in a political system that has almost become a blind trust for corporate interests. And they want them now. Soft money contributions, which have allowed both political parties to raise unregulated and unlimited amounts for blatant attack ads that appear in the guise of issue advertising, came to almost $500 million in the last election. Enron’s individual, political action committee and soft money contributions totaled $2.4 million. Shays-Meehan would prohibit political parties from collecting soft money.

Now that the Enron controversy has pushed campaign reform over the top in the House, Daschle needs to give it one last boost. The Democrat is right to try to work with Republican senators to ensure their cooperation, but he shouldn’t become bogged down in protracted negotiations. Some Republicans have threatened to stymie the reform bill by loading it up with amendments that would send it straight back into the unfriendly arms of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. The GOP leader has admitted that he views this legislation as “Armageddon.”

GOP foes of Shays-Meehan--including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), one of the most strident opponents of campaign reform--appeared Tuesday to be backing away from their earlier threats to block the legislation through a filibuster. That’s encouraging. Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), an opponent of the bill, has indicated that he may vote against any filibuster attempt. Smith has it right: “We’ve debated it long enough.”

Foes of reform are on the defensive for now. They are pinning their hopes on a possible court challenge that would argue that banning soft money suppresses free speech. But how the courts will react to campaign finance reform cannot be predicted. It may well survive any challenges. But it won’t get to that stage unless the Senate passes Shays-Meehan and sends it directly to President Bush. Now is not the time to falter. It is the moment for finally getting reform passed.