If the bill were passed, it would be the first big revision to campaign-finance legislation since the current rules were enacted in 1974.
As for the voters' rejections of incumbents, Ms. Quinn said Wednesday in an interview that they were far from being a repudiation of the Council, but were an inevitable outcome of one of the Council's most significant accomplishments, revisions in campaign finance laws.
There is a growing movement to reduce such harmful effects through bold structural reforms: revision of the campaign finance system; broader disclosure of contributions to and spending by candidates and organizations; stronger limits on the revolving door that moves lobbyists in and out of government; overturning the Citizens United decision and limiting the role of corporations in elections.
The mayor's legal team argued that a 1998 charter revision banning corporate campaign contributions also had the effect of nullifying a law that encourages candidates to rely on smaller contributions in return for receiving more city money for their campaigns.
"Our groups strongly oppose an effort being made by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to sneak a revision in the campaign finance laws into an omnibus appropriations bill that would for all practical purposes eliminate the limitations on coordinated expenditures by political parties," the letter said.
The revisions to the campaign finance law approved yesterday are significantly different from the original proposals supported by the Campaign Finance Board.
Fred Wertheimer, an advocate of revisions in federal campaign law, said the union's hidden sponsorship of American Family Voices dramatized a longstanding problem in American politics.
"This is an extraordinary development," said Fred Wertheimer, an advocate of revisions in federal campaign finance law and the president of Democracy 21, a group that works toward that end.
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has blocked a law that would silence victims of domestic violence, forced marriage and child abuse and demanded major revisions after a campaign by Afghan activists and western diplomats.
Other Congressional advocates of campaign revisions speak similarly of Mr. Gore during his eight years in the House and eight years in the Senate: he was a reliable vote or co-signer, but his heart was elsewhere.
