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Opinion of Kennedy, J.
position to legislation that would benefit a party contributor on the grounds that " 'we've got to pay attention to who is buttering our bread' " and testified he did not think there was any question " 'this' " (i. e., "donors getting their way") was why the legislation passed. See App. 805. Senator Feingold, too, testified an unidentified colleague suggested he support the legislation because " 'they [i. e., the donor] just gave us [i. e., the party] $100,000.' " 251 F. Supp. 2d, at 482 (Kollar-Kotelly, J.).
That evidence in fact works against the Government. These two testifying Senators expressed disgust toward the favoring of a soft-money giver, and not the good will one would have expected under the Government's theory. That necessarily undercuts the inference of corruption the Government would have us draw from the evidence.
Even more damaging to the Government's argument from the testimony is the absence of testimony that the Senator who allegedly succumbed to corrupt influence had himself solicited soft money from the donor in question. Equally, there is no indication he simply favored the company with his vote because it had, without any involvement from him, given funds to the party to which he belonged. This fact is crucial. If the Senator himself had been the solicitor of the soft-money funds in question, the incident does nothing more than confirm that Congress' efforts at campaign finance reform ought to be directed to conduct that implicates quid pro quo relationships. Only if there was some evidence that the officeholder had not solicited funds from the donor could the Court extrapolate from this episode that general party contributions function as quids, inspiring corrupt favoritism among party members. The episode is the single one of its type reported in the record and does not seem sufficient basis for major incursions into settled practice. Given the Government's claim that the corrupt favoritism problem is widespread, its inability to produce more than a single instance purporting to illustrate the point demonstrates the
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