a result, prior to the enactment of BCRA, federal law permitted corporations and unions, as well as individuals who had already made the maximum permissible contributions to federal candidates, to contribute “non-federal money”– also known as “soft money”– to political parties for activities intended to influence state or local elections. Shortly after Buckley was decided, questions arose concerning the treatment of contributions intended to influence both federal and state elections. Although a literal reading of FECA’s definition of “contribution” would have required such activities to be funded with hard money, the FEC ruled that political parties could fund mixed-purpose activities – including get-out-the-vote drives and generic party advertising – in part with soft money. In 1995 the FEC concluded that the parties could also use soft money to defray the costs of “legislative advocacy media advertisements,” even if the ads mentioned the name of a federal candidate, so long as they did not expressly advocate the candidate’s election or defeat. FEC Advisory Op. 199525. [Footnote 7:] ... In 1990 the FEC . . . promulgat[ed] fixed allocation rates. 11 CFR § 106.5 (1991). The regulations required the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Democratic National Committee (DNC) to pay for at least 60% of mixedpurpose activities (65% in presidential election years) with funds from their federal accounts. § 106.5(b)(2). By contrast, the regulations required state and local committees to allocate similar expenditures based on the ratio of federal to nonfederal offices on the State’s ballot, § 106.5(d)(1), which in practice meant that they could expend a substantially greater proportion of soft money than 209