In the first three months of this year, the Democrats' three main fund-raising committees together raised a majority of their money from big soft-money donors, one of whom gave $7 million. In all, the Democratic groups raised $48.7 million, three-fifths of it in soft money.

The Republicans, by contrast, raised 70 percent of their money in the first quarter in smaller regulated amounts known as hard money. Such donations will become the sole legal national fund-raising allowed under the McCain-Feingold campaign legislation — unless its limits are held unconstitutional. In all, Republicans raised $68.2 million.

Representative Nita M. Lowey of New York, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which raises money for House candidates, said that since she took over the committee in January 2001 "my focus has been to increase hard-money donations, even before campaign finance reform passed."

One step has been to increase how much each representative is assessed to finance the committee, from $10,000 to $15,000, with exceptions for members in extremely tough races. The Republican minimum is $12,500, said a spokesman for the Republicans, Carl Forti.

Mrs. Lowey said last year that she was "shocked to see the limits of our systems and technology" for reaching out to small contributors. She said the committee had invested more than $1 million in new technology and Web sites. Still, in the first quarter, her group raised $4.9 million in small contributions and $7.1 million in soft money.

At the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, its executive director, Jim Jordan, said: "This isn't an institution that has focused on raising $1,000 checks. We thought they were better left to campaigns."

While Mr. Jordan, too, spoke of a greatly expanded direct-mail effort, he also said the committee would "take our soft-money donors and make them hard-dollar raisers" after Nov. 6, when the new law takes effect.

That approach was used effectively by President Bush's campaign committee. With donations to a presidential campaign limited to $1,000 in 2000, he organized 215 Pioneers, who each raised at least $100,000. That tactic will be more important next year, because the most an individual can give to all party committees in a two-year election cycle will go to $57,500 under McCain-Feingold from $50,000. The maximum to any one party committee will increase, to $50,000 from $40,000.

Mr. Jordan said he also expected the reliance on soft dollars to decrease this year as a result of a "new focus" on small donors. But in the first three months of the year, his Senate group raised $4.8 million in hard money and $6.2 million in soft money. Its Republican counterpart raised a total of $15 million, $9.9 million in hard money.

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, recently told party leaders that his group "has had the best first-quarter in direct-mail fund-raising" in party history. Mr. McAuliffe said in a memorandum on April 4 that the party took in $8 million from 205,514 individuals, of whom 34,636 were first-time donors.

But that $8 million was almost all the party raised in hard money, which had a total of $8.7 million. The soft money total of $17 million included gifts of $7 million and $5 million from two prominent Hollywood executives.

The Republican National Committee raised a total of $31.7 million, all but $5.4 million in soft money. Its cash on hand of $38.8 million is, in terms of election resources, vastly larger than the Democratic committee's $23.7 million, of which $15.5 million in soft money will mostly go to building a new headquarters. Republicans have no similar expenses.

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

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