A New Day or a False Dawn?

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If on Monday McCain was killed by a friend, on Tuesday it was his turn to kill one. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, fellow war hero, was one of the only senators at McCain's side during his ill-fated presidential bid. Yet now he was the one standing in McCain's way. Hagel was sponsor of an alternative bill that instead of banning soft money would limit it: his measure would allow couples to donate $540,000 in each two-year election cycle to candidates and parties, not much of a brake on the current system. McCain and Feingold knew that Hagel had the quiet encouragement of the White House and that if his bill passed as proposed, theirs was as good as dead.

As it turned out, Hagel did McCain and Feingold a favor. He knew there were senators who didn't like all of his bill, and he feared being outmaneuvered; so he divided it into three parts and let the Senate vote on each. At first Feingold and McCain wondered what he was up to. "Then I realized, oh, this is great!" Feingold recalls. "We're going to finally get the vote we've been wanting to have for five years — up or down on soft money. That was the turning point."

As the roll call proceeded and the number of senators voting to reject Hagel's soft-money provision grew, McCain and Feingold headed to the press gallery, and Feingold checked with the clerk. It was 59 to 40, with one senator out.

"Who is it?" he asked.

Joe Lieberman. "My fists went up in the air, and I went ' 60' — the magic number, a filibuster-proof repudiation of the soft-money system," Feingold says. "Some tough things happened after that, but that was when we showed we had control of the Senate on this bill."

On the same day the senators also knocked back Hagel's proposal to triple the amount of hard money individuals could give, but by a much narrower vote, 52 to 47. That gave the reformers their road map. The votes to ban soft money were there, if they could find the right formula for increasing the $1,000 hard-money limit, which hadn't changed since 1974. McCain and Feingold had to come up with a hard-money deal, and quickly.

It was going to be an excruciatingly delicate negotiation. Some Republicans said they could live without soft money if the hard-money limits were tripled, as Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, a McCain ally, proposed. But some Democrats would never go that high. Dianne Feinstein of California had proposed $2,000, and Daschle had made it clear that was the absolute maximum he could accept.

On Wednesday morning McCain and Feingold orchestrated matters to produce precisely the same number of votes for the Thompson and Feinstein proposals, to force both sides to the table while assuring they were on exactly equal footing. The summit was supposed to last an hour and a half, but stretched on for three. "Outside of Vietnam, I don't think John's ever been in a room for three hours," adviser John Weaver said dryly.

The half a dozen Republicans sat on one side, the Democrats on the other; their anxious staffs were reduced to bringing in sandwiches and staying out of the way. For a long time neither side budged. The Democrats, Thompson feared, were going to walk, and he was ready to go back to the floor to lambaste them for killing the deal.

The breakthrough came from an unlikely source — GOP senator Don Nickles, who had long been among the bill's enemies but who wants to become the next majority leader. He showed leadership Wednesday on the issue of how much, in total, an individual could give candidates and parties in a year. The Republicans were holding tough at $50,000, the Democrats at $30,000. "Let's just split the difference," Nickles finally said — not quantum physics but enough to get them talking. Eventually they agreed to $37,500.

They were so, so close. The Democrats slipped into the chamber to huddle with a visibly tense Daschle. Back in the LBJ Room, Thompson proffered one last piece to seal the deal: the GOP had moved much further on the hard-money limits; if the Democrats would index the limits for inflation, they had a deal. Feinstein shot out of the room to take the offer to Daschle, and for a few final moments the Republicans waited. When the deal was done, Thompson grabbed his throat with both hands, mock-choking over the compromise he had struck.

The reformers rushed to the floor, for fear the compromise would spoil if left too long. But the vote was a slam dunk, 84 to 16 — even McConnell voted for it, saying he considered the increase in hard-money limits "a step in the right direction."

Thursday had always promised to be an ordeal. The finish line was in sight, but it was guarded by a grizzly — the non-severability amendment that, if passed, would throw all their hard work in doubt. Throughout the week the bill's opponents watched McCain rack up victories, knowing they had this last weapon. But McCain had 150,000 weapons of his own: e-mail correspondents who were kept abreast of the bill's progress and told which Senate offices to barrage with calls and e-mails. On Thursday they made sure that 20 Senate office switchboards were lit up all day. McCain's Straight Talk America cyberoperation would put out an alert if a member was wandering off the reservation. "Literally, within an hour, we'd have complaints on the Senate floor" from the senator in question, says strategist Rick Davis. Illinois' Dick Durbin, whose vote was in question, at one point came up to McCain on the floor and, according to Davis, said, "Look, I'm going to vote with you guys. Tell your people to cease and desist."

But until the final vote on non-severability Thursday afternoon, McCain and Feingold didn't know if they had the votes they needed to kill it. Seven or eight Democrats were worried that if the courts threw out the limits on independent issue ads, lawmakers would be left without the soft money they need to fight back. The tally was expected to be very close — a pro-reform lobbyist was counting 51 votes on his side — and there was even speculation that Dick Cheney might come in to break a tie. But at last, once it was clear the reformers would prevail, wavering Senators climbed aboard. That, many reformers agreed, was a tribute to Daschle, who in the end earned McCain's trust and kept most Democrats in line. "This was truly Daschle's day," said Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21. "McCain is entitled to his credit, but the Democrats supplied the votes."