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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Senate Keeps Campaign Finance Reform Alive But Victory Is Merely Symbolic Because Gop Filibuster Still Looms

Alison Mitchell New York Times

Defying the Republican leadership, a majority of the Senate voted Tuesday to keep alive legislation that would overhaul the way the United States’ political campaigns are financed.

The Senate’s 51-48 vote against Sen. Trent Lott’s attempt to table - or kill off - bipartisan campaign-finance legislation marked a symbolic victory for the bill’s sponsors, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russell Feingold, D-Wis., who long have sought a direct vote on their proposal.

But their support fell well short of the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster. A successful filibuster would ensure that the campaignfinance debate would end once again in a partisan stalemate this year.

Forty-four Democrats and seven Republicans voted to sustain the measure Tuesday, while 48 Republicans voted to kill it.

Minutes after allowing the reform forces their one symbolic victory, Lott, the majority leader, went on the offensive.

The Mississippi Republican used a parliamentary tactic that would allow him to choke off any more amendments that might build more Republican support for the McCain-Feingold bill. And in a dart aimed at President Clinton, who has advocated free television time for candidates, Lott offered an amendment of his own that would block the Federal Communications Commission from moving to require free or discounted TV time.

Democrats responded by threatening to do what they did last year and start tying the Senate in procedural knots throughout the year to keep campaign finance reform alive.

“I’m disappointed and frustrated,” said Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., the minority leader, “and I must say I’m prepared to take this to whatever length required to bring this to a successful resolution this week, next week, at some point in the future.”

The confrontation comes in the aftermath of a 1996 presidential election that saw the virtual collapse of the post-Watergate public campaign finance system, as the two parties found ways to use “soft money” to get around the campaign spending limits in the public-finance law.

But while the Republican leadership is intent on examining Clinton’s campaign finance practices, it fiercely has resisted legislation that would eat into the GOP fund-raising advantage. Lott worked hard last year to prevent the campaign finance bill from coming to the floor and only grudgingly allowed Tuesday’s vote after reform supporters created a three-week logjam in the Senate last autumn.

The McCain-Feingold bill would ban unlimited, unregulated large donations to political parties, known as “soft money,” which was at the heart of many of the 1996 abuses.

The bill also would curb issue-advocacy commercials by outside groups by stipulating that an issue advertisement could not use a candidate’s name or likeness within 60 days of an election.