Earlier this week, Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders announced that he will introduce legislation that will create a robust public campaign-finance system in an attempt to beat back the unhinged influence of big money in the U.S. electoral system.
"The need for real campaign finance reform is not a progressive issue. It is not a conservative issue. It is an American issue," Sanders said on the Senate floor. "Let us be frank, let us be honest, the current political campaign finance system is corrupt and amounts to legalized bribery."
The announcement comes in light of a New York Times blockbuster report that as of June, roughly 130 families and their businesses are responsible for more than half of all money raised for Republican candidates and their respective super PACs.
"We are talking about a rapid movement in this country toward oligarchy, toward a government owned and controlled by a handful of extremely wealthy families," Sanders said.
This new bill will come on top of Sanders's marquee policy position that calls for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. He also recently pledged that, if elected president, he would only appoint Supreme Court justices who are committed to overturning the decision.
Still, despite grassroots support for a constitutional amendment, such a route remains more of a political pipedream than reality. Sanders's new call for a public campaign-finance system is reflective of a shifting strategy within reform circles-one that emphasizes not only a repeal of Citizens United, but also gives imperative to changing the funding mechanisms of elections.
"What that means in terms of electoral races is that we're not going to let any candidates get away with saying that they're pro-reform unless they're talking about public financing," campaign-finance reform advocate Zephyr Teachout told me in an interview last week. "They cannot, like Hillary Clinton, talk about a constitutional amendment and not talk about the most obvious and easiest thing to do, which is switch to a public-financing model. You're not an anti-corruption candidate if you're not talking about public financing."
The thinking is that even if Citizens is repealed, it would only be going back to the campaign-finance world of 2009-hardly a democratic utopia. By instituting a robust public-finance system, small donors' concerns would be amplified through matching funds and the reliance on mega-donors would be minimized.
So while Sanders makes it clear he understands that campaign finance reform isn't one-dimensional problem, has anyone else?
Most Republicans have remained mute on the subject of campaign-finance reform and it's rather unthinkable to imagine a conservative supporting the use of public money to fund campaigns-Mitch McConnell has likened it to "welfare for politicians."
And while the current Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, supports the overturning of Citizens United, she's refrained from articulating a position on public campaign finance.
Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley is in favor of overturning Citizens United, and has voiced support of public campaign finance-though he's yet to come forward with a formal proposal. "I think a lot of cities are moving to publically financed campaigns and as more cities successfully do that, it'd be nice to see that kind of bubble up," O'Malley said at a New Hampshire campaign visit in March. "I haven't advanced a proposal on this; I'd certainly be open to it."
Other public campaign-finance bills have been recently introduced in the House, but so far to no avail. So while the feasibility of Sanders's getting any kind of similar bill pushed through a Republican Senate is unlikely, he is bolstering his surprising campaign surge by acknowledging what most in the campaign-finance-reform world have been saying for some time now: Repeal doesn't mean much if there's no public financing that goes with it.
