seriously undermine the effort to close the soft-money loophole for 527 groups which resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in unlimited soft money being spent to influence the 2004 federal elections.

Members use them as slush funds. You just don't have to do this to raise money.

To effectively address the scandals in Washington, which revolve around the multiple ways lobbyists use money to buy influence, Congress must reform the lobbying, campaign finance and ethics rules, and create new means for enforcing these rules.

[Fred Wertheimer, a longtime advocate for campaign finance reform, called DeLay] the king of a Washington-lobbyist, influence-money approach for governing America. ... pay-to-play philosophy.

I think there's a grassroots effort. None of us has any money to spend. After listening to all the information, we decided seniors should vote 'no' and the reasons are many.

The battle goes on. There's a very powerful case to establish that these ads were about defeating Sen. Feingold, not lobbying him.