Much of that, the report found, was spent on advertising including issue advertisements that attacked federal candidates, a phenomenon that the new law tried to eliminate.
Bopp wanted to argue that the McCain-Feingold ban on issue advertisements violated the First Amendment.
It also reins in issue advertisements by outside groups before elections.
Paying for issue advertisements is an increasingly appealing route for many donors.
It would also restrict corporations and labor unions from running issue advertisements before an election.
Issue advertisements paid for with soft money have no financial disclosure requirements.
Rather, he decided to bring a preëmptive lawsuit objecting to the ban on issue advertisements before elections.
One of the primary targets of the new law was the increasingly meaningless distinction between candidate advertisements and "issue" advertisements.
Tens of millions of dollars more has been spent on issue advertisements whose precise costs are difficult to measure.
"Unregulated issue advertisements and independent expenditures by special interests present a particularly grave and immediate threat," the justices said.
Such a provision would then kill off the soft money ban as well as any provisions on issue advertisements.
