results was confirmed by the fact that almost all of them aired in the 60 days immediately preceding a federal election. Corporations and unions spent hundreds of millions of dollars of their general funds to pay for these ads, and those expenditures, like soft-money donations to the political parties, were unregulated under FECA. Indeed, the ads were attractive to organizations and candidates precisely because they were beyond FECA’s reach, enabling candidates and their parties to work closely with friendly interest groups to sponsor so-called issue ads when the candidates themselves were running out of money… Because FECA’s disclosure requirements did not apply to so-called issue ads, sponsors of such ads often used misleading names to conceal their identity. “Citizens for Better Medicare,” for instance, was not a grassroots organization of citizens, as its name might suggest, but was instead a platform for an association of drug manufacturers. And “Republicans for Clean Air,” which ran ads in the 2000 Republican Presidential primary, was actually an organization consisting of just two individuals – brothers who together spent $25 million on ads supporting their favored candidate. While the public may not have been fully informed about the sponsorship of so-called issue ads, the record indicates that candidates and officeholders often were. A former Senator confirmed that candidates and officials knew who their friends were and “sometimes suggest[ed] that corporations or individuals make donations to interest groups that run ‘issue ads.’” As with soft-money contributions, political parties and candidates used the availability of socalled issue ads to circumvent FECA’s limitations, asking donors who contributed their permitted quota of hard money 212