Participant, meanwhile, is eager to help pay for issues-oriented films like "The Help," which it backed in part.
Federal election rules require that the parties pay for "issue advertising" with a complicated mixture of hard and soft money.
Even if contributors gave to the fund, they could still pay for issue-related commercials for a candidate under the umbrella of independent expenditures.
In a March 14 e-mail to Mr. Bush, the vice president had proposed that both campaigns renounce the use of soft money to pay for issue advertisements.
The checks, written to the political parties by individuals, unions, corporations and others, are frequently used to pay for issue advertisements attacking candidates from the opposing party.
Under Federal Election Commission rules, the national parties pay for issue advertisements with 65percentt hard, or federal, money and 35percentt soft money.
But some experts on federal election law were troubled that the message strongly implies that the money will help the Gore-Lieberman ticket pay for issue advertisements.
In a March 14 e-mail message, Mr. Gore had challenged Gov. George W. Bush to a bilateral ban on the use of soft money to pay for issue commercials.
The 2002 McCain-Feingold law put an end to the unlimited "soft money" donations by corporations, unions and wealthy individuals to party committees, which used it to pay for "issue" ads that often attacked or supported candidates.
The National Republican Congressional Committee has agreed to pay a $280,000 fine for illegally funneling soft money to other groups to pay for issue advertisements during the 2000 elections, the Federal Election Commission said.
The court ruled that corporations could pay for issue-based advertisements, even ones that pointedly criticized or praised a candidate in the weeks leading up to an election, unless there was no other "reasonable" way to interpret the commercial other than as "an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate".
