McConnell Expects to Block Campaign Finance Bill
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A key U.S. senator said Sunday he believes he has enough colleagues lined up to block a bill to reduce the influence of money in politics. But others said they expected lawmakers to yield to public pressure and send the measure to President Bush to sign into law.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said he expected 41 senators to oppose the mainly Democrat-backed bill passed last week by the House of Representatives.

The measure would implement the biggest overhaul of U.S. election laws in a generation by banning unlimited "soft money" donations to national political parties and restricting broadcast ads shortly before elections.

"I do," McConnell told "Fox News Sunday" when asked if he anticipated having have enough senators to stop the bill.

McConnell disclosed that Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican who backed an earlier version of the bill, was positioned to become the 41st senator needed by opponents of the measure in the Senate to block the bill passed by the House.

"Senator Stevens ... is now on our side," said McConnell, long the Senate's leading opponent of the campaign finance reform bill. "I believe, I'm pretty confident, that I have 41 senators."

To get to a vote on passage, 60 of the 100 senators must agree to do so. The Senate will take up the measure after it returns on Feb. 25 from a week-long recess.

McConnell, who has complained that the bill would violate freedom of speech, said he and other critics could block the measure or force changes in it.

"The devil may be in the details," McConnell said. "We're reading the bill very carefully. We want to see for sure what's in it."

Any Senate change would force the measure into a House-Senate conference where foes fear it would likely die.

Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and a driving force behind legislation, said on Sunday, "Over time I think we will prevail."

"I think we will get 60 votes," McCain told NBC's "Meet the Press."

"If we don't get 60 votes, there will be another scandal, as I predicted before Enron," he said, referring to the failed energy giant that collapsed after years of making heavy political donations in return to for access to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Bush, who has sat on the sidelines for much of the debate over campaign finance reform, has not said if he will sign the bill. But he has told fellow Republicans not to count on him to veto it. The measure could become law without his signature.

"There were mixed signals sent from the White House during the House debate, but I hope he will sign it," said McCain, who made campaign finance reform a signature issue in his failed bid for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination.

Ed Gillespie, a Republican political consultant who formerly served as a press secretary to House Republican Leader Dick Armey of Texas, a leading foe of the bill, said he expects the measure to become law.

"I think some Republicans will try to block it, and some Democrats may secretly be hoping that they're successful," Gillespie said on "Meet the Press."

"But ... I suspect campaign finance reform passes the Senate, goes to a conference and gets to the president's desk," Gillespie said. Asked if he expected Bush to sign it, Gillespie said, "I suspect he will."

On the CBS "Face the Nation" program, McConnell, stating, "I don't think it's our goal to kill it entirely," promised senators would consider unspecified changes.

But he also said if "significant changes" were deemed necessary, his forces would conduct a "full-scale filibuster in the Senate" to block passage until the revisions were made.

"I think we'll have a sense by a week from now when we get back in, what kind of changes might be needed," he said.

Supporters of the bill in the House defeated a crush of proposed amendments they feared would have killed the measure, including one that would have prohibited "soft money" donations to state and local parties as well as national ones,