"These issue advocacy groups are to some extent the creature of campaign finance reform itself," Ramey says. "When you squeeze money out of the federally disclosed paths, it just goes to other paths. Probably all of us would like to see these issue advocacy groups disappear. But if we do, the money will find another way in, under the surface, that we'll like even less. The money doesn't go away."

Other opponents of Shays' and McCain's campaign finance reform efforts -- like Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas; and Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif. -- chose not to comment.

Perhaps not surprisingly. As pointed out by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., a leading critic of the campaign finance system, the Brennan Center study notes that "political parties using soft money are the worst abusers of the phony issue ad loophole."

Political parties are allowed to use "soft money" -- unrestricted donations that are meant for various "party-building" activities and not for specific candidates -- for "issue advocacy" ads.

But both the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee are misusing the loophole, according to the study. Of those studied, 85 percent of the ads didn't even mention the political party until the end. And 99 percent of the "party-building" ads mentioned the name of a candidate.

"In '98, we saw the extent to which political parties have taken to use so-called 'issue advocacy' as a major element in their election strategy," Mann says. "All of these ads are run not to generically 'help the party,' but in specific geographical districts and states, mentioning the name of a candidate, most of them having an attack component -- and they don't have any issue content."

One "party-building" ad cited in the study was run by the Wisconsin Republican Party and involved the Senate campaign of then-Rep. Mark Neumann, who was challenging Feingold in 1998. In an attempt to portray Republican Neumann as independent, the "party-building" ad bragged about how often he had voted against his party. "He even stood up to his own party to rebuild Social Security," the ad says.

Party soft-money ads have been an issue in the past couple of months. Vice President Al Gore once pledged that he would forgo "soft money" television ads run by the DNC as long as the RNC didn't run any either. On March 14, Gore said that he would "take the first step by requesting the Democratic National Committee not to run any issue ads paid for by soft money unless and until the Republican Party uses money for advertising ... You have the power to join me in banning soft money. If you are willing to do the right thing, we can change politics forever." But DNC chairman Joe Andrew said this week, "We will put [ads] up when we think it's strategically important to put them up."

Since "issue ads" are classified as such and don't fall into the purview of FEC law, they can be funded anonymously.

One of the most notorious examples of this, according to Jamieson, occurred during the Republican presidential primaries when a pseudonymous group calling itself "Republicans for Clean Air" ran an "issue" ad (Watch the ad.) that blasted the environmental record of Arizona Sen. John McCain and praised that of Gov. George W. Bush. The New York Times soon reported that financial supporters of Bush's -- Sam and Charles Wyly -- had set up the organization and poured at least $2 million into the ads. The incident was interpreted by proponents of campaign finance reform as a crass skirting of campaign contribution limits and a textbook example of the problem with "issue ads."

"I think the ads that are the most problematic are the ones run by pseudonymous groups ... like the Wyly brothers ad," says Jamieson. "These are ads that seem to have electoral intent but they skirt the law."

Calling the study "eye-opening," McCain -- one of the Senate's leading voices for campaign finance reform -- argues that it "provides more ample proof that we must act to change our campaign finance laws. Loopholes are being exploited at an alarming rate and this report proves that this statement is not just anecdotal, but factual."

Moreover, McCain warns dramatically, "We will continue to see the increase of the pernicious effect of an evil that goes unchecked. And like any evil, it will get worse before gets better."

The Brennan Center study "shows explicitly and convincingly that sham 'issue ads' are indeed campaign ads," says Shays. "They target specific candidates, and they are meant to influence elections. We should treat sham 'issue ads' the same way we treat campaign ads under the existing election laws."

"For the first time we've gotten a real empirical handle on the nature of political advertising," says Mann. "For the first time, we've gotten a sense of the relationship between what the courts have said about express advocacy and issue advocacy and what's actually going on out there in the real world of politics."

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