West Virginia's Chief Justice of the Supreme Court lost his primary race this week in the wake of scandal.  West Virginia is Big Coal country, and Chief Justice Elliott Maynard was found to have cavorted in Monaco and on the French Riviera with Don Blankenship, CEO of a major energy company that just so happened to be a defendant in a $50 million suit that the WV Supreme Court later dismissed with Justice Maynard casting the deciding vote for the defense.

The Politico ran with a story today, "Reform Allies Defend, Hold Fire on McCain" detailing the response of reform groups to the McCain and Obama candidacies, heavily implying that Common Cause and other reform groups are afraid to criticize McCain and even that we have no credibility in commenting on the presidential race because of our once-close relationship with McCain.

The story ignores that Common Cause has already publicly taken McCain to task: our letter in March explicitly urged McCain to support reforms "both in actions and in words" and stated that "it is clear to us that you need an FEC vote to allow you to withdraw" from the primary public financing system.

And it leaves out the most important question on reform in this election cycle: what will the candidates do to reform our democracy and get big money out of politics if elected?  Indeed, we already addressed this question with two of our reform allies, putting together a comprehensive review of what each candidate (McCain, Obama, Clinton) has done or committed to do if elected.  

Common Cause is far from the only organization bemoaning the focus on questions of "what is [candidate] doing on the campaign trail?" instead of the more important question of "what will [candidate] do in his/her term as President?"  That problem is one of the press in general, on all policy issues, not just democracy reform.  Nevertheless, as we've said time and again, that is the question we ought to ask of the presidential candidates.  For the Politico to leave that out is an error that misses a critical question we've put to McCain, Obama, and Clinton.  Feel free to read our analysis here.

The big problems with our voting - electronic voting machines, vote-suppressing ID requirements, long lines - get attention in the media and by advocacy groups like Common Cause.  Less attention is paid to the face of voting - the tens of thousands of pollworkers who run the polling place in neighborhoods across the country.  Of course, most are dedicated, do a good job - but some don't.  This story came to my attention recently:

And this dispiriting conclusion:

In what will no doubt be a frequent topic for conversation -- at least around here -- the Rocky Mountain News covers the dozens of national corporations who will cosponsor the Democratic National Convention.  The same is happening at the RNC, and in fact, 20 corporations are cosponsoring both events.  Most folks, even those at the DNC, mince few words about what's at stake:At least he doesn't beat around the bush -- they pay for access to the lawmakers and party elites.  The interests of those sponsoring companies get a further breakdown, below.

After last week's series of disappointing non-resolutions to the FEC nomination mess, Sen. Harry Reid pushed back and demanded that the White House either remove Hans von Spakovsky or allow individual votes on the slate of FEC nominees.  (Roll Call subscription req'd.)

After months without a functioning FEC, as we called on Senate leadership to find suitable nominees and re-constitute the important -- if often ineffectual -- commission in time for the peak of election season, this week it looked like we might have caught a break.  Sen. Harry Reid's office spoke with the White House, and the White House sent six FEC nominations (three D, three R) to the Senate.

How quickly hopes can crumble.

We've recently heard that Sen. Mitch McConnell is poised to insist on a package deal -- all or none -- rather than allowing each nominee to get an up or down vote.

This is an unworkable proposal, not unexpected from McConnell, a bitter opponent to all campaign finance regulation.  First, the choice of nominees reflects a remarkably partisan and subversive intention towards the FEC, in particular the selection of Hans von Spakovsky and Donald McGhan and the removal of current chairman David Mason from the list.  CC Prez Bob Edgar sent this letter to the entire U.S. Senate on Wednesday.  Here's part of his beef:

The subject of stripping Mason's name off the list brought back memories of a similar purge in Common Cause's early days, however, and is in some ways the most egregious piece of this whole maneuver.

On Tuesday, April 29, almost 200 Common Cause activists and allies gathered in New York's capital for "take your ethics to work day" in order to demand more of our state government. Recent scandal (after scandal after scandal) has only reinforced the urgent need for changes to the way Albany does business.

A paper in Binghamton underscored this last week when it wrote: "If ever there was a state government in need of [reform] it's ours, which has correctly been labeled the most dysfunctional in the land. Albany is to government what Britney Spears is to motherhood." Legislators, Blair Horner of NYPIRG pointed out, "have to do something to regain the trust of the public before facing them in November."

We gathered for Reform Day 2008 to offer legislators a way to regain that trust. We provided principles of a reform agenda, endorsed by dozens of organizations throughout the state, around which they could craft meaningful reforms. The broad issues for reform include changes to the way campaigns are financed, the way the legislature operates, how legislators are held accountable to the public, and termination of the partisan gerrymandering in New York State.

Click "Read More" for more on Reform Day 2008.

I'm cross posting a piece here on small donors, which I worked with our president Bob Edgar to put together, looking at the trends in small donor giving this cycle for presidential and congressional candidates -- the two are very different -- and how that impacts our work to limit big money's role and engage more people in our political system.

Check it out below the fold.