Brushing aside a fierce Republican counter-effort, campaign-finance reform advocates in the U.S. House of Representatives scored a string of early victories Wednesday, defeating several GOP-sponsored amendments to the Shays-Meehan campaign-finance reform bill.
Despite strong objections from Republican leaders, the House gave a preliminary 240-191 endorsement to the bill to ban unregulated “soft-money” donations to national political parties and restrict broadcast attack ads in the period before an election.
The measure, which gathered new momentum from the collapse of big-money donor Enron Corp., would constitute the broadest change to campaign-finance laws since contribution limits were first imposed in the mid-1970s after the Watergate scandal.
The Shays-Meehan campaign-finance reform bill, a version of the McCain-Feingold legislation passed last summer by the Senate, bans soft-money campaign contributions by corporations, unions and individuals.
The bill, sponsored by Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays and Massachusetts Democrat Marty Meehan, picked up support from 39 Republicans to out-poll two alternative Republican proposals to completely ban soft money.
“Soft money” is the term for donations to political-party campaign funds not designated to a specific candidate. Under current law, donations of this type are unrestricted.
“Hard money” is money given directly to candidates by individuals or political action committees. Corporations and unions are prohibited from contributing directly to candidate’s coffers.
At press time, debate continued on nearly a dozen amendments offered in attempts to shake loose a coalition formed in support of the bill.
UW political science professor Charles Franklin said he thought the bill had significant loopholes for protecting the type of funding it seeks to prohibit.
“The big thing is that if the soft-money ban goes through, it really affects parties’ fund raising. Parties have made up a big chunk of candidates advertising,” Franklin said. “The big questions would be, where does all that money go afterward? What routes might it take to get into campaigns?”
Both Republicans and Democrats have expressed concern that the bill may not meet constitutional muster.
“Soft money used for political expression has been limited, and courts have upheld this. [Shays-Meehan] goes further. Some think soft money is a form of speech,” UW political science professor Donald Downs said.
Mainstream media is neglecting certain provisions of the bill, which are being heavily debated in the House.
“Another provision of the bill stipulates that you can’t name a candidate in an ad 60 days before an election,” Downs said. “It’s nonsense. The press is exempt from this rule, so it’s totally unprincipled.
