Campaign Finance: McCain's Up Again

By Frank Pellegrini Wednesday, Sept. 15, 1999
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Stay tuned for another episode of "As the Windmill Turns," starring John "Don Quixote" McCain. Campaign finance reforms champions in the House, Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Marty Meehan (D-Mass.), have done their part again after getting their soft-money ban past an unfriendly Republican leadership on Tuesday night. After running a gauntlet of poison-pill amendments designed by GOP bigwigs to erode its support and picking up one, courtesy of upstate New York Republican John Sweeney, that would make Hillary reimburse us for riding Air Force One to campaign stops the bill sailed through by a 252-to-177 vote. Fifty-four Republicans split from their party to back the bill, only 13 Democrats opposed it, and reforms proponents broke out the figurative champagne, toasting the day when politics and politicians are no longer for sale to the highest bidder.

Which is just what happened last year. And once again the bill a carbon copy of the 1998 version heads off to the Senate, where it has died oh-so-many deaths before. For years running, John McCain and Russ Feingold have seen their own soft-money ban gather a majority of 52 votes in the Senate, still eight short of busting the promised filibuster of the GOPs head moneyman, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The headcounters say eight votes is still just too much to roust up on an issue thats near and dear to GOP leaders (who hand out the soft money come reelection time) but somewhat less so to voters. Will this year be different? McCain, of course, has an entire presidential campaign riding on the possibility; expect him to shout it from the rooftops when his bill gets its mid-October day of debate on the Senate floor. Bill Bradley could choose to lend some moral oomph from outside the ring. But the biggest noise could come from McConnell himself. The House victors are urging McCain & Co. to try an old-time tactic from the civil rights days actually making McConnell filibuster himself hoarse in the name of the fat wallets. Hed probably just read the Bible, but itd make some gripping C-SPAN and maybe the voters would finally start to listen.