(FORTUNE Magazine) – The scourge of the presidential primaries--special interests that pour hundreds of volunteers into campaign headquarters, lawn-sign crews, and get-out-the-vote drives--are about to fade from the scene. Although Democrats may still try to mobilize auto workers in Iowa while Republicans park religious conservatives at phone banks in South Carolina, the foot soldiers of both parties are being outmaneuvered by some big guns. But don't celebrate the cleansing of the political system just yet. The old special interests, which contributed gobs of people, may be on the wane. But that just means more power for the newer special interests--from Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley--that contribute gobs of money.

It's true that this change comes just four years after the foot soldiers of the right, including religious conservatives, ended four decades of Democratic rule on Capitol Hill. But congressional races are local contests, where people power still matters. Presidential politics once consisted of a string of local contests too: state caucuses and primaries strung out over six months. A win in Iowa or New Hampshire could give a candidate the momentum and the dollars to go on. But next year California and New York will hold their primaries right after Iowa and New Hampshire. It takes real money to run in those megastates; candidates who don't have it lined up before the Iowa caucuses might as well call it quits.

Money, always the mother's milk of politics, is becoming its oxygen as well. Notice how much time Al Gore spends in Silicon Valley. Expect George W. Bush to court Texas oilmen--and his father's moneyed connections. Watch Elizabeth Dole play on her connections at Archer Daniels Midland, the same way her husband did. (Most intriguing, but least-known, fact about the 2000 race: D. Inez Andreas, the wife of controversial former ADM chieftain Dwayne O. Andreas, joined the Red Cross board a year after Dole became the organization's president.)

The candidates already out of the race are precisely the ones who had planned to rely on people power: Missouri Senator John Ashcroft (backed by an army of religious conservatives) and Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone (backed by an army of union leftists). Political professionals aren't exactly shedding tears as the old era passes. Over the years, ideologues warped both parties. In 1984 and 1988, liberal Democrats pushed Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis too far left. In 1992, Pat Buchanan pushed Republicans too far right, helping to defeat President Bush.

That's no threat in 2000, when the big news will be the convergence of the political establishment and the business establishment. Except for Al Gore, the current crop of candidates--Dole, Bush, Bradley--is acceptable to corporate interests and comforting to business leaders. Watch out, Mr. Vice President.

DAVID SHRIBMAN is Washington bureau chief of the Boston Globe and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter.