The Neediest Cases invests unrestricted contributions from trusts and estates of $50,000 or more into an endowment account.

Beyond that, the major state parties will be at liberty to accept unrestricted contributions to spend liberally on the contest as supposedly independent expenditures.

The $500,000 donors to the gala represent a new level of giving in the arena of soft money, the large, unrestricted contributions to the political parties.

The current rule has a couple of clear loopholes, especially in the area of so-called soft money, the large unrestricted contributions to the national political parties.

The groups said the parties had established "shadow committees" that would let them illegally continue to receive large unrestricted contributions known as soft money.

In practice, however, as these independent expenditures grow, they present the same danger as unrestricted contributions.

Next week the Senate is scheduled to debate whether to ban these unrestricted contributions to the political parties.

After years of debate, soft money, the unrestricted contributions raised and spent by political parties and interest groups, will finally be regulated.

Bright donated an unrestricted contribution of $25 million to Texas A&M in 1997.

The bill would have banned soft money, the unrestricted contributions that fall outside Federal election law.