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The reluctant activist
Judy Shepard talks about her struggles to accept her son Matthew's homosexuality, his brutal murder and the unwanted celebrity she decided to use on behalf of gay rights.
By Dave Cullen
[10/15/99]

The treaty that ended in war
Experts discuss the Senate's vote against the global nuclear test ban treaty, Clinton's biggest foreign policy failure yet.
By Alicia Montgomery
[10/14/99]

Desperately seeking angry white females
Hate groups move beyond their traditional "angry white male" constituency to recruit as many new female members as they can find.
By Dennis McCafferty
[10/14/99]

But does it matter?
Al Gore gets the nod from the AFL-CIO. But will it translate into strong support from the union rank and file?
By David Moberg
[10/14/99]

Nuclear spanking
The Senate rejects the test ban treaty amid partisan bickering.
By Jake Tapper
[10/13/99]

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Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Sen. Bob "The Torch" Torricelli, D-N.J., offered a stronger substitute amendment -- which would have replaced McCain-Feingold with the much more comprehensive House version of the bill, offered and passed in the House by Reps. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Marty Meehan, D-Mass. A similar bill failed to get 60 Senate votes in February 1998 and the new amendment, should it replace the bill from Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., will certainly fail again.

The surprising move had Capitol Hill scrambling for answers and the staffs of the four leading campaign finance reformers confused as to what, exactly, Daschle and Torricelli were doing, and what was motivating them to do it.

"We always knew they [the Democrats] were going to try something like this," McCain said in an interview Friday afternoon. "Everyone in Washington wants to keep the status quo."

Added McCain's chief of staff, Mark Salter: "It was a foregone conclusion that as soon as we got close to [the required] 60 votes [needed to push the bill forward toward a vote], Democrats would start jumping ship. Something's going on out there. Someone must be really scared that we're close to 60."

McCain and Feingold had scaled back their campaign finance reform bill in an attempt to make it more palatable and to make opposition to the bill less defensible. The current McCain-Feingold bill includes a ban on party "soft money" -- the unregulated, unfettered, limitless reservoirs of cash both parties are flooded with, which McCain has called "the most egregious" stink from the sewer that is the funding of the American political system.

The Shays-Meehan bill, on the other hand, includes a number of provisions -- including regulation and a pre-election day ban on "sham issues ads" -- which have limited support in the Senate. Reform activists accused Daschle and Torricelli of using parliamentary Machiavelliana to replace a bill that has a chance of passing with one that is all but guaranteed to fail.

It all made for a very confusing day where few knew who was doing what and to whom and why. Daschle's spinners claimed the Democratic leadership was just trying to get a "test vote" on the issue. But in doing so, Torricelli and Daschle were acting against the wishes of both senators offering the actual bill. Both Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, spoke out on the Senate floor opposing the day's weird machinations.

Senators and their staffs are full of speculation about Daschle and Torricelli's motives.

Daschle, who wants to be majority leader within his lifetime, and Torricelli, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), are said to like soft money. Republicans overwhelmingly kick ass on raising the regulated "hard" dollars, but there is rough parity when it comes to the respective abilities of the Democratic and Republican parties in accruing soft money.

Thus, the argument goes, Daschle and Torricelli oppose passage of the McCain-Feingold bill because of their belief that it robs the Democratic Party of its ability to play against the GOP in an area where it remains competitive. And both men want to elect more Democrats in 2000 and regain majority control.

Shamelessly opportunistic Torricelli is possibly the most disliked senator in recent history. He's a relative newcomer to the Senate, and his DSCC fiefdom is his only position of power. A steady influx of soft money helps him to stay a player. His colleagues might not respect him, but they like the campaign cash he's a master at raising for them.

Next page | Who's the real campaign reformer?