Word: feingold
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...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...
McCain and Feingold thought they had a good idea who their enemies were. McConnell never pretended to see the smallest merit in anything they proposed. To him the debate is a basic free-speech issue: if people want to spend their money supporting candidates or making TV ads about a candidate's environmental record, that is their prerogative. But as the week began, it was not McConnell who posed the greatest threat. It was, of all people, Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone, the most earnest, make-the-world-a-better-place Senator...
McCain knew the worst was happening when he came into the Senate chamber for the vote. "Gramm was standing down in the well, grabbing people and talking to them, going back into the cloakroom," he says. And it wasn't just fellow Republicans plotting against the bill. McCain and Feingold realized that some Democrats privately wanted to see the bill die. It had been easy to support in the past, when it had no chance of passing. But in the 2000 election the Democrats had become as slick as the Republicans at raising soft money; do away with...
...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...
...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...