It's all about the way campaigns are financed.
Maine, New Mexico, Arizona, Vermont, New Jersey and North Carolina all have implemented some form of public campaign financing in recent years.
In May, Portland, Oregon approved public financing for city elections.
The Illinois Senate has approved public financing legislation and the House will have it on its fall agenda.
Both houses of the Hawaii legislature approved public financing this year, but the session ended before the bill could be ratified.
Montana fell just one legislative vote short of approving public financing for judicial elections.
Public financing bills are building up heads of steam in Washington, California, Maryland and West Virginia.
Some states, like New Jersey, are tip-toeing into public financing by limiting the experiment to just a few legislative districts. Others, like North Carolina, have started with candidates for judgeships.
As hard as it is for citizen action groups to get public financing rolling through state and municipal legislative bodies, the effort carries with it its own momentum.
The members of Congress, state legislators, governors and others I know who have been in public office, hate the current system.
Who wouldn't hate a system that required you to raise $7.5 million to win a U.S. Senate seat or $850,000 to win a seat in the U.S. House? (2004 averages). Most members of Congress must raise thousands of dollars every day of their official lives just to be competitive. Most potential candidates see the money wall as an unscaleable barrier and give up on the idea of public service entirely.
The secret from the inside is that most current office holders would cheer mightily if they were relieved of the job of begging for campaign money from special interest groups.
The old saying is that "you get what you pay for."
In politics, it also works in the inverse: "you get what you don't pay for." Translated into governmental action, that generally means you get to pay taxes that big campaign contributors avoid, you get to reap the costs of subsidies and special benefits that high flying lobbyists steer through regulatory agencies, the Congress and state legislatures. You get to watch private interests submerge public interests.
The pharmaceutical companies have a huge war chest engaged in fighting a California initiative that would regulate drug costs and benefits. The tobacco companies invested heavily in the Bush presidential campaigns and in GOP members of Congress, and won billions in concessions from the Justice Department that they couldn't win directly from the courts. The oil companies...well, no explanation needed here...just won billions in subsidies in the new energy bill, plus the right to expand their empires with less interference by state or local regulators.
Stop by the Capitol in Washington on a day when a major piece of legislation is scheduled for a vote and you will see platoons of people in expensive suits and skirts lining the corridors to get one last shot at a wavering member before he or she casts a vote. The message is clear---this is a money vote.
Don't expect reform of this system to start at the top. It took years for McCain-Feingold to weave its way through the special interest obstacle course to become law. And when it did it was a pale version of its former self, made even weaker through subsequent "interpretation" by various regulatory bodies.
That's why the revolt at the grass roots is so important. The initiative for reform is rising up from a whole lot of disgusted Americans who know that they are losing the battle to have their legislative bodies represent the public before the powerful.
It may take a few years, but the effort is making impressive headway, and once it gains momentum there will be no stopping it. Those senators, congressmen and state legislators who find it hard, now, to resist the millions in handouts to stay in office will, for the most part, climb aboard the public financing campaign once they see it as a winner
Why wouldn't they? Most entered public life to accomplish something more than finish each day in synch with their campaign contribution tally sheets.
Joe Rothstein, editor of USPoliticstoday.com, is a former daily newspaper editor and long-time national political strategist based in Washington, D.C.