While average citizens sit at home, disconnected from politics, wealthy special interests will have access and influence at the national party conventions due to their huge soft money contributions, Common Cause President Scott Harshbarger said. The parties are going to use much of this soft money to air campaign ads, masquerading as issue ads, to help elect their presidential and congressional nominees to office. This is an illegal scheme to launder money into federal campaigns almost all of which would be illegal if given to candidates directly. According to Common Cause, the national parties are on pace to raise close to half a billion dollars in soft money during the 1999-2000 election cycle, shattering all previous soft money fundraising records for an election cycle. The fact that soft money is being raised in vast quantities by the congressional committees further illuminates the legal fiction that soft money is supposedly not being used to help elect federal candidates to office, Harshbarger said.
Hard money means contributions that are legal under federal law for federal elections.
Soft money means contributions made outside the limits and prohibitions of federal law, including large individual or PAC contributions and direct corporate or union contributions. Totals do not include transfers between party committees, bank loans or interest, offsets to operating expenditures, or other business-related receipts.