The Clean Money Campaign is now in the California Senate. Assemblymember Loni Hancock (D) has introduced a bill to create publicly-funded campaigns in California, similar to Arizona and Maine. It passed the Assembly in February and is now working its way through Senate committees.

Sounds appealing, but would it work?

Publicly financed elections are intuitively appealing, because of the perceived corruption in the process, and the immense amounts of time candidates spend fundraising. Public funding would seem to put the politicians back to work, instead of groveling for cash among fat-cat donors.

California went through a "kick the bums out" phase back in the late 1980's and early 1990's that led to a flurry of legislation and initiatives. Now we have a system where legislators lack institutional knowledge due to term limits, and many of those measures to "clean things up" were struck down in court. I wonder if Clean Money would meet the same fate.

David Sirota likes it, and said so on his blog.

The League of Women Voters likes it too.

Who doesn't like clean money? A brief search turned up a couple letters to the editor. How does this pass the Assembly without a Republican vote and still not have a registered opposition?

The bill is interesting in that it designates money for candidates based on their major party affiliation. This uses the logic that major party candidacy is a reasonable proxy for campaign viability. However, a Republican in Berkeley wouldn't necessarily be a viable candidate, and a Green in San Francisco wouldn't be a non-viable candidate. I recognize that the major parties would never vote for something that reduces their centrality to the process, but a truly fair public financing scheme would allow minor party candidates to get as much as the major party candidates.

Keep an eye on this one.