rganizations and fund their voter mobilization activities. These activities are important because parties are more inclined than are candidates to register and mobilize new voters. National party money also pays for generic, party-focused election advertisements and issue-oriented public relations campaigns that give the parties greater visibility among voters During the 1996 elections, the parties used soft money to expand their communications activities to include substantial expenditures on issue advocacy advertisements and independent expenditures. The design of issue advocacy ads is to encourage citizens to support or oppose public policies or candidates. They differ from candidate advertisements in that they cannot expressly call for the election or defeat of individual candidates and do not qualify for the lowest unit rate charges when aired on television or radio. Party issue advocacy ads differ from party coordinated expenditures in that the issue ads are financed by a combination of hard money and soft money. The Democratic national, congressional, and senatorial campaign committees spent approximately $60.9 million on issue advocacy ads in 1996 elections. Their Republican counterparts spent about $49 million in those contests Party independent expenditures, like those made by PACs, can expressly call for the election or defeat of specific candidates. Parties must make these expenditures without the knowledge or consent of individual candidates and must finance them solely with hard money. Like issue advocacy ads, independent expenditures do not qualify for lowest unit rate charges. In 1996, Republican Party committees spent almost $10 million on independent expenditures, whereas Democratic committees spent slightly more than $1.3 million. The current campaign finance system gives incumbents overwhelming fund-raising advantages and discourages highly qualified challengers from running for Congress. It makes it difficult for ...
