ibute or spend soft money directly on behalf of federal candidates, national parties used these funds to purchase buildings, computers, media studios, and other equipment that have strengthened the committees organizational capacities and their abilities to assist their candidates. The national parties also distributed soft money to help state and local party organizations modernize their operations and better serve candidates. In the past, much of this money was used to hire professional executive directors, computerize data processing and accounting procedures, and purchase voter lists. The national parties' party-building efforts have contributed to a reversal of the traditional flow of power from county and state party committees upward (Bibby 1998). From the late 1980s through the 1994 elections, national parties transferred large sums of soft money to state parties for campaign-related activities commonly referred to as "coordinated campaigns." These consisted of targeting studies, polls, and voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives that were designed to benefit federal and nonfederal candidates whose names appear on the ballot. The national parties distributed soft money to state and local party committees in accordance with their own strategies. These expenditures enabled them to further increase their influence over state and local party committees. During the 1996 elections, national party organizations distributed substantial sums of soft money for the purposes of broadcasting issue advocacy advertisements. Some issue advocacy ads were intended to set the national political agenda or influence the presidential election. Others were intended to set the agenda in a specific House or Senate election or to praise or attack an individual congressional candidate. Some state party committees had input into the content of the ads, but in many cases they merely served as conduits for payments to the political consulting firms th...
