What A Party, by Terry McAuliffe: on Government Reform


Terry McAuliffe: I favor a ban on soft money

In 2001 Congress was likely to pass major campaign finance reform. In politics, soft money is the term for big checks. The idea was that the DNC and RNC needed money for party-building and those funds, called soft money, could come from any source in any amount. Hard money came from individuals and was limited to $25,000 per person to the national party per election cycle.

No one was sure if campaign finance would really pass, but I'd said all along that I favored a ban on soft money. I had a reputation as the king of soft money because of some of the high-profile large-donor fund-raising I'd done during the Clinton years, but over the course of my more than 20 years raising money, more than 90% was small, individual checks.

Source: What A Party!, by Terry McAuliffe, p.281-282 Jan 23, 2007

  • The above quotations are from What A Party!
    My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators, and Other Wild Animals
    by Terry McAuliffe.
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Page last updated: Feb 26, 2019