ASHINGTON, June 19 — Federal election regulators rejected an effort today to water down a provision of the new campaign-finance legislation intended to eliminate those "issue ads" that are often thinly veiled attacks on federal candidates paid for by unrestricted donations from corporations, unions and other advocacy groups.
Backers of the McCain-Feingold law, which is intended to overhaul the financing of political campaigns, hailed the decision by the Federal Election Commission as a victory that preserved one of the measure's core provisions. But these advocates say other commission rulings today were likely to seriously weaken the law's broader purpose of ending the influence of the unrestricted campaign contributions known as soft money in Congressional and presidential elections.
At its meeting today, the commission, which has three Republican and three Democratic appointees, voted on rules that will put the soft money provisions of the law into effect in November, immediately after the Congressional elections.
The new law bans national political parties — but not state parties — from raising soft money. State parties, however, are explicitly prohibited from using that money to run television advertisements that "promote," "support," "attack" or "oppose" candidates for Congress or the White House. This provision was intended to ensure that donors would not get around the law by simply rerouting their money to state parties, which could then pay for advertisements that attack federal candidates for their positions on hot-button political issues.
The chairman of the commission, David M. Mason, proposed a rule today that would have exempted any advertisement that urged people to call lawmakers or the White House about legislation or any "widely discussed policy proposal" — so long as the commercial did not advocate the election or defeat of a particular lawmaker.
Mr. Mason said the provision would clarify what types of communications are covered by the McCain-Feingold provision. He emphasized that the language of his proposal would not undermine Congressional intent and would likely survive scrutiny by the courts. The commission has an "obligation to resolve constitutional difficulties," he said.
Mr. Mason's proposal, which the commission rejected by a vote of 4 to 2, "would have ripped our state soft money provision wide open and would have been a road map for how the parties could continue running phony issue ads paid for with soft money," said Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin and one of the bill's co-sponsors.
The commission also approved a rule allowing state political parties more time before an election to use soft money to pay for activities like voter identification and get-out-the-vote efforts. The panel also substantially narrowed the range of party-building activities that state parties are required to finance without using soft money. In addition, the commission voted to let state parties spend soft money on Internet communication, like e-mail messages to prospective voters.
Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21 and a longtime advocate of changing the way campaigns are financed, said these actions "would increase the role that soft money can play in federal elections through state-party expenditures." He added, "It's clear they are engaged in rewriting the statute."
Several commissioners angrily disputed the contention that they were "gutting" the McCain-Feingold legislation, saying that the vote on the issue-ad provision demonstrated that they were willing to write rules in keeping with what the lawmakers intended.
"Powerful forces here in Washington have sought to prevent this agency from issuing clear, bright-line rules," said Commissioner Michael E. Toner, a Republican appointee. Without such rules, he said, people active in politics would be left "guessing, under the threat of government investigation, about what they can and cannot do under the new law."
Another commissioner, Bradley Smith, a Republican appointee, decried what he called the "paranoia and hysteria" surrounding the rulemaking and the "meanness of spirit and poverty of good will" that he said critics of the commission had shown.
The McCain-Feingold law, passed in March after a six-year partisan battle, was meant to close provisions in the country's election laws that allow political parties to use large donations from businesses, labor unions, other groups and individuals to finance television advertisements aiding specific candidates.
This system, which grew out of rulings made by the commission more than 20 years ago, effectively allowed donors and parties to circumvent rules that restrict donations from individuals and political action committees. In 1999-2000, soft-money donations to Democrats and Republicans totaled nearly $500 million.