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"I think people are finally beginning to realize that if you want to cut off these abuses ... you've got to cut off soft money and call 'sham issue ads' what they are: campaign ads," Shays said in an interview with Salon News immediately after his victory. "People who are focused on this realize that these unlimited sums of money from corporations and unions are polluting our political system."

The controversial bill would ban the campaign finance loophole known as soft-money contributions; classify "sham issue ads" as campaign ads, thus requiring legal, "hard" dollars; and improve Federal Election Commission disclosure and enforcement, among other things.

(Soft-money contributions are donations to political parties, rather than individual candidates, and there is no limit on them. "Sham issue ads" are ads attacking a politician that purportedly address issues rather than supporting a campaign, but in practice clearly advocate one candidate over another. Since they aren't paid for by the campaign, the ads are not subject to contribution limits or disclosure requirements.)

This year's debate was anti-climactic, according to GOP insiders. One leadership aide noted that last year, debate over the bill was much more vigorous, as members worried about how the final vote would go and how the result might affect their reelection chances.

The last time around, the GOP leadership, under then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, put up a host of roadblocks for the would-be reformers. "We had all those wacky rules," the aide recalled. "All sorts of hoops and crazy things Shays-Meehan had to jump through, all those non-germane amendments." Debate grew testy.

By contrast, "This year everybody was already locked in," the aide said. "Outside of think tanks and editorial boards, where they might think otherwise, it's pretty boring up here tonight. It's a real snoozer. You got a handful of guys out there talking themselves silly, but attendance on the floor is pretty sparse."

While agreeing that Wednesday's debate "was more low-key" than last year's battle, Shays maintains that "there was a very real effort to kill it. But the people who voted for it last year held firm and stood their ground."

The debate over the bill -- led by the soft-spoken Shays, the professorial Rep. Tom Campbell, R-Calif., and the fiery Zach Wamp, R-Tenn. -- lasted almost until midnight. The three reformer Republicans were joined by Democrat Meehan -- whose job was considerably easier than that of his GOP counterparts, because House Democrats marched in lockstep in favor of the bill. (Although it could be fairly observed, of course, that House Democrats had at least half a century to act on the issue and didn't really seem to care about changing the system -- until they lost control of the House in '94.)

The Shays-Meehan team faced some powerful opposition, led by Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif., and House Administration Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif.

Opponents cast the Shays-Meehan bill as a strike against the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. "It continues to amaze me that members of Congress, newspapers and 'senior scholars' continue to advocate limiting free speech and prohibiting citizens from criticizing government officials in the name of 'campaign reform,'" DeLay said on the floor of the House. "This is the mother of all government regulation and control over the political process. The Shays-Meehan bill will erect a Byzantine set of laws and over 275 new government regulations that will gag citizens' speech."

Additionally, Shays' opponents continually cited the Buckley vs. Valeo Supreme Court decision, in which the court ruled that "the First Amendment denies government the power to determine that spending to promote one's political views is wasteful, excessive or unwise."

Realizing that that decision was an issue, Shays' team relied on Campbell, a Stanford University constitutional law professor and resident expert, who assured them that their bill would hold up to judicial review.

In the end, Tuesday's debate gave a temporary sense of closure to Shays, who has been slaving away at this seemingly Sisyphean task all year, at times possibly risking his job in the process.

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