Mike Thompson: “As the Senator knows, much of the soft money went for those kinds of ads. I would not be supporting a provision that I…”

“As the Senator knows, much of the soft money went for those kinds of ads. I would not be supporting a provision that I did not think would pass constitutional muster. What this bill does is basically what the Senator says. It says that you look to the circumstances. If something is called an issue ad, but it is really an ad for a particular candidate, it is called such. If it walks, quacks, and acts like a duck, we are going to call it a duck. You can still say whatever you want to say. Nobody is shutting anybody off. There are no free speech implications here. But if you are really going to do a candidate ad--and in some cases, we have candidates going around coordinating with independent groups, and the groups run an attack ad on their opponent, the candidate dictates where and when that ad is going to be, and all the details and the composition of it, and it is called an independent expenditure. What this would do would be to say we have a regulatory system. Whether anybody likes it or not, we already have a regulatory system. If it is an express ad for a particular candidate, it is already regulated. What this legislation would do is say you would look at the factors, look at the given situation. If it is an express ad, if it is really for a candidate, we are just going to call it that, and it is going to be regulated under the same system express ads are regulated under now.”