Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), a target of Democrats, had little incentive to break with her party on the measure. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Dems table campaign finance reform

Senate Democrats failed to attract a single Republican vote on the DISCLOSE Act Tuesday, effectively defeating the bill and casting doubts over whether any campaign finance measure can pass the upper chamber before the November elections.

Aides in both the Senate and the House insisted the legislation will come up for consideration again. But with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) painting the bill — which failed 57-41 — as detrimental to his conference, a packed legislative docket and contentious elections on the horizon, sending the DISCLOSE Act to the president’s desk now appears to be a long shot at best.


Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), in accordance with the procedural rules, voted against opening debate on the bill to leave open the opportunity to bring it to the floor at a later date.

“There’s no reason to rush toward trying to pass a piece of legislation that needs broad support and [requires getting] the policy right, constructing the approach right — and certainly not in time for this election,” Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) told POLITICO, citing the years-long process of completing the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill.

“One has to ask the question as to why [Democrats] need to be driving this for this election. Perhaps it benefits their side more than it does ours — I don’t know — but the fact is, we’ve got to get the policy right, and it’s not there yet.”

Snowe had been a key target for Democrats pressing for a bill that had the support of their full caucus. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who missed the vote Tuesday for a funeral, told Reid he would have supported cloture, according to leadership aides, but Snowe had little incentive to break with her party on a measure the GOP leadership stood strongly against.

Opening debate on the DISCLOSE Act would have pushed a small-business jobs bill Snowe has been working on for months off the floor again.

“Right now, we should be focusing on jobs and the economy and small businesses, but they want to continue to incorporate all these other issues at a time in which the overarching issue facing Americans today is high unemployment and the economy,” Snowe said.

Despite the bleak outlook for securing 60 votes to break a procedural filibuster, Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Tuesday that the majority leader “intends to revisit the issue at some point later in the future.”

A House Democratic aide close to the negotiations on the bill echoed what Senate staffers had earlier suggested: The Senate should return to the issue in September, giving voters and independent groups time to pressure on-the-fence senators during the August recess, while also drawing attention, closer to Election Day, to Republicans’ “siding with corporations.”

“Quite frankly, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to bring this up again in September, when you give it a chance to crystallize the position of Democrats as standing for the public’s interest and Republicans [as standing] against it,” the aide said. “You let this vote sit out there for six weeks in these senators’ states — there are a lot of good-government groups where this is their top priority — and you build an aggressive campaign highlighting these senators’ votes on this, and you pressure them to change their minds.”

A Senate official confirmed that the bill could be revisited after the recess, adding that “it is also a good debate for us in the fall,” since Democrats would be able to characterize themselves as fighting for increased transparency in election spending, after passing a Wall Street reform bill that drew minimal Republican support.

The other wild card in Congress’s push on the bill, which aims to temper the effects of a spring Supreme Court decision lifting many of the restrictions on corporate giving, is the White House. President Barack Obama was slow to throw his weight behind the bill, making a last-ditch effort Monday by challenging Republicans in a Rose Garden address.

But with continued administration support, the bill could find new life in the fall. In a policy statement Tuesday, the White House stood strongly behind the principles of DISCLOSE, which supporters believe implements new transparency guidelines within the parameters of the Supreme Court decision.

“This bill is not perfect. For example, the administration would have preferred no exemptions. But by providing for unprecedented transparency, S. 3628 takes great strides to hold corporations that participate in the nation’s elections accountable to the American people,” the statement read. “As this is a matter of urgent importance, the administration urges the Senate to approve the DISCLOSE Act and looks forward to working with both houses of Congress promptly to produce a final bill for the president’s signature.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the bill’s chief Senate sponsor, had altered the House version of the legislation late last week to attempt to lure Republican votes. The new Senate language sought to make the treatment of unions and corporations more balanced. The tweaked legislation would require corporations, unions and advocacy groups to reveal their roles in political ads or mailings in the closing months of a campaign. Companies that receive Troubled Asset Relief Program funding and smaller government contractors would also be barred from underwriting “electioneering communications.”

But further changes seem unlikely, as Senate and House Democratic officials said “Schumer has gone the extra mile” trying to generate a bill that “could get Republicans on board.”

GOP aides said delaying the date the bill would go into effect — so that it wouldn’t govern the upcoming election — might attract some Republican votes. Snowe, however, told POLITICO that such a concession would not earn her vote.

Despite the daunting reality, independent groups lobbying for the DISCLOSE Act remain hopeful that something will get done eventually.

“Several Republican members of Congress have a long history of supporting transparency when it comes to money in politics, though none in the Senate displayed that sense today. The issue is not whether there is a Republican member of Congress who supports disclosure — there are plenty — but whether one or more of these public officials are willing to stand for this principle against the wishes of national Republican Party leaders,” said Craig Holman, legislative representative for Public Citizen, a nonprofit advocacy group. “The DISCLOSE Act will not fade away.”