McCain and Feingold Use Public Forum to Pressure Lawmakers

McCain and Feingold Use Public Forum to Pressure Lawmakers

NewsMax.com Wires
Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2001

WASHINGTON – Using the bully pulpit of a town hall meeting to boost support for their campaign finance reform bill in Little Rock, Ark., Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., Monday promised extensive travel in an effort to attract votes.

The two lawmakers are the best-known proponents of a bill to ban unregulated donations to political parties and limit private groups from running issue advertisements just before an election. The measure had encountered stiff procedural resistance in the Senate, but a recent agreement between McCain and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., should allow the bill to get a debate and vote on the Senate floor by early April.

A McCain staffer said he planned public forums that would increase support for the bill, events located away from the nation's capital, where most of its opponents reside. McCain stressed that tactic in his speech to the Little Rock crowd.

"We're trying to cover as many states as we can," he told the supporters.

A lobbyist for the pro-reform group Common Cause, which is helping McCain push the bill, said the event planners intend to encourage reformers around the nation to fight for the bill.

"The purpose of the town hall meetings is to talk to Americans around the country about the McCain-Feingold bill," the lobbyist said. "It is to get people activated and energized."

Instead of targeting individual lawmakers who disagree with the bill, the lobbyist said that the group would campaign with the senators to find voters interested in reducing the impact of soft money on campaigns. Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., is up for re-election in 2002 and opposes many of the bill's provisions. Democratic representative Marion Berry, who many observers think might challenge Hutchinson for the Senate seat, joined Feingold and McCain onstage as a supporter of the bill.

"It is not about pressure, but as any good lobbyist knows, you look at the sites where there are folks who should be for reform," the source said. "The event targets people who Mr. McCain thought should be on the train here."

Representatives for both McCain and Feingold refused repeated requests for comment.

Other events could take place in Ohio, Kansas, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon and perhaps Louisiana. The Kansas event could be used to encourage Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican, to support the bill, while the New Jersey event could be a way to help show Sen. Robert Torricelli, a Democrat, the extent of the hunger for reform in his state, according to the Common Cause source. Torricelli was recently chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and led the group to a record-breaking level of campaign fund raising.