Yesterday, Democratic presidential hopeful Martin O'Malley added a new plank to his campaign platform: public campaign financing for congressional elections within five years. The former Maryland governor had previously supported a public-funding model in his state and had hinted on the campaign trail that he would come out with a substantive policy on the federal level soon.
The move comes as the Democratic field is being pushed by campaign-finance reformers to go beyond just calling for a repeal of Citizens United by endorsing robust public campaign financing. Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders announced that he would introduce legislation that would institute a federal public campaign-finance model.
Earlier this week, prominent campaign-finance reformer and Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig said he is considering a presidential run as a referendum candidate, with a sole focus on restoring democracy through election reform.
Hillary Clinton, whose campaign is heavily reliant on mega-donors, has made vague platitudes suggesting support for public campaign-finance models in addition to her support for overturning Citizens United, but as of now she hasn't articulated a clear policy.
While O'Malley's plan would expand public financing to congressional candidates, it doesn't specify whether it would be done through public matching funds, vouchers, a grant model, or something else. Nor does it address how to fix the ailing presidential public funding system. And it certainly doesn't offer a realistic path for managing to get such a measure through Congress, but to O'Malley's credit, nobody has proposed a cure for Republican ineptitude … yet.
