New Hampshire Congressman Charles Bass is once again standing up for the new McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.
He was the only Granite State lawmaker to support the legislation when it passed last year.
Now he's defending the law against a constitutional challenge that the Supreme Court will take up next week.
NHPR's Washington Correspondent Judith Smelser reports.
Second District Congressman Charles Bass has signed onto a brief defending the new campaign finance law - it was filed with the Supreme Court last month.
The law bans previously unregulated soft money contributions and severely restricts issue advertising by unions, corporations, and to some extent, other interest groups as well.
Bass says the new rules are a positive step.
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"I have felt for some time that the influence that corporations and labor unions have gathered over the last decade or so and the influence they have over the election process needs to be regulated, needs to be controlled, needs to be addressed."
The law had strong bipartisan support in Congress, but not everyone was happy with it.
Senator Mitch McConnell opposed the legislation, and when it passed, he filed a constitutional challenge against it.
He is joined in his fight by a multitude of interest groups, ranging from the National Rifle Association to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Senator McConnell's attorney, Jan Baran, says it's all a question of free speech.
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"As long as people or organizations are spending money on speech and they're doing so independent of the candidates, independent of the political parties, they're basically expressing their own viewpoint - that is core First Amendment speech."
He argues that the McCain-Feingold law goes too far when it tells some groups what they can say on the airwaves - and when they can say it.
He also thinks current lawmakers are far from unbiased on the question.
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"I can see why incumbent senators and congressmen feel that there may be too much speech going on, particularly when that speech may be critical of their performance in the House and the Senate."
Charles Bass admits he'll be glad to be rid of some of that criticism.
But he also believes the new rules - if they're upheld by the Supreme Court
- will give local New Hampshire voices more influence in the electoral process.
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"The difference will be there won't be all this negative, presumably all this negative advertising that has been run advocating, never for my election, usually for my defeat, by entities outside of NH that really have little or no connection with the state."
The Supreme Court is coming back early from its summer break to deal with the case, in hopes of clarifying exactly what rules will be in place for the 2004 elections.
For NHPR News, this is Judith Smelser in Washington.
