Word: feingolds
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...amount of hard money individuals could give candidates and parties, and that compromise paved the way for the historic vote to ban the unlimited soft-money donations that parties could collect from corporations, unions and the wealthy. By the end of the week the Arizona senator, his sidekick, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and their merry band of china breakers actually had victory in sight - a victory that could lead to the most dramatic campaign finance overhaul since the post-Watergate reforms of 1974. McCain-Feingold's reforms are so sweeping, in fact, that no one can be sure of what...
...McCain and Feingold, who brush aside such alarms, it was a moment for celebration, and not only because they were poised to win a lonely battle they had fought for years. The two weeks of debate that ended Friday surprised many veterans of the Senate's joyless forced marches. The debate was both civil and principled; people listened, and some even changed their mind, persuaded by new arguments and old loyalties to make a leap of faith. No one knew as the week went on how it would turn out; every day brought another threat to the bill's survival...
...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...
...wanted - a victory for campaign finance reform - and what Trent Lott wanted, which was a few Republican moderates to help send his president off on Easter recess with a brand-new budget. In any case, a foot-dragging Tom Daschle got the budget disruption he wanted by spilling McCain-Feingold over into next week, but whatever magic the Republicans worked to get their tally to 50 will go down as Lott's great coup...