The US elections will be remembered for more than the cliff-hanger presidential race. This year's campaign also essentially buried federal limits on the role of money in American national elections.
Record-shattering sums - and new ways to get them into campaigns in large, unregulated amounts - have shredded restrictions imposed after the Watergate scandal.
On Thursday the Democratic and Republican parties reported their first post-election finance totals, beginning to provide a comprehensive view of the 2000 campaign.
Election winners and losers alike are expressing incredulity at the escalating money race, and wondering what the future holds.
"It even staggers me, and I'm pretty hardcore," said Mr Harold M. Ickes, the driving force behind the Democrats' no-holds-barred 1996 fund-raising and a senior adviser this year in Ms Hillary Rodham Clinton's successful New York Senate race.
Six years after a California candidate spent $27.5 million of his own money in a failed attempt to buy a US Senate seat, a New Jersey investment banker proved that it could be done - with double that sum.
In the presidential race the Republican nominee, Mr George W. Bush, refused federal funding for the primaries because that would have forced him to accept spending limits. As a result, he waged the first privately-financed $100 million campaign in US history.
Altogether political donors, who four years ago provided a record $2 billion for candidates for federal office, raised the stakes this year by an estimated $500 million.
Independent interest groups, also exploiting loopholes in campaign spending laws, pumped so much money into their own advertising campaigns in some congressional districts that the candidates themselves felt like bystanders.
"You had as much control over the system as a Londoner during the blitz," said a shell-shocked Representative Brian Bilbray, a San Diego Republican who was defeated last month. More of the same is in prospect. With both the House and Senate evenly divided and the redrawing of House districts according to the new census expected to create more competitive House seats in 2002, a renewed race already looms.
Each election since Watergate has set new standards, and this one was no exception:
In New Jersey, Democrat Jon S. Corzine poured $56.8 million into his successful Senate bid, his post-election campaign report shows. This was twice as much as the previous record holder, Mr Michael Huffington, spent of his own money in his 1994 California Senate race.
In New York, the candidates and parties lavished well over $80 million on the contest between Mr Clinton and Republican Rick Lazio, another record.
Democrat Adam Schiff of Burbank, Calif., ousted Rep. James E. Rogan in the nation's first $10 million House race.
Outside groups, led by the pharmaceutical industry, the AFL-CIO, the US Chamber of Commerce and Planned Parenthood, spent more than $300 million - double the 1996 figure - to run their own advertising campaigns for and against candidates, the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found.
Special-interest contributions to campaigns rose 80 per cent from 1996 to $381 million, led by financial services ($66 million), manufacturing ($29 million) and labor unions ($24 million) as of October 18th, said the Campaign Study Group of Springfield, Virginia.
The ranks of the $250,000plus individual donors jumped fivefold - from 24 during the last presidential season to 133 in 2000.
Altogether, the Republican and Democratic national committees disclosed in their first post-election campaign reports that they raised $303 million and $231.5 million, respectively, for the two-year cycle.
The campaign finance system adopted in 1974 limited contributions from individuals to $1,000 per candidate for a single election.
Political action committees run by companies, unions and special-interest groups faced a $5,000 ceiling.
The new laws provided presidential candidates with partial public funding during the primaries, and total public financing in the general election.
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