named Roger Tamraz, who candidly acknowledged that his donations of about $300,000 to the DNC and to state parties were motivated by his interest in gaining the Federal Government’s support for an oil-line project in the Caucasus. The minority described the promotional materials used by the RNC’s two principal donor programs, “Team 100” and the “Republican Eagles,” which promised “special access to high-ranking Republican elected officials, including governors, senators, and representatives.” One fundraising letter recited that the chairman of the RNC had personally escorted a donor on appointments that “‘turned out to be very significant in legislation affecting public utility holding companies’” and made the donor “‘a hero in his industry.’” In 1996 both parties began to use large amounts of soft money to pay for issue advertising designed to influence federal elections. The committee found such ads highly problematic for two reasons. Since they accomplished the same purposes as express advocacy (which could lawfully be funded only with hard money), the ads enabled unions, corporations, and wealthy contributors to circumvent protections that FECA was intended to provide. Moreover, though ostensibly independent of the candidates, the ads were often actually coordinated with, and controlled by, the campaigns. The ads thus provided a means for evading FECA’s candidate contribution limits. The report also emphasized the role of state and local parties. While the FEC���s allocation regime permitted national parties to use soft money to pay for up to 40% of the costs of both generic voter activities and issue advertising, they allowed state and local parties to use larger percentages of soft money for those purposes. For that reason, national parties often made substantial transfers of soft money to “state and local political parties for ‘generic 214