Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin dropped by the Big Tent today. Durbin is the champion and co-author with Sen. Arlen Specter of the bipartisan Fair Elections Now Act (S.1285), the bill to create a full public financing system for U.S. Senate races. The average Senate winner spent $9.6 million in 2006, and as Durbin likes to point out, it cost an average of over $7 million to lose a Senate race last cycle.

Durbin spoke to bloggers and other media but I caught him on his way out. I thanked him for his leadership on public financing. True to form, he ignored the praise and spoke of the work to be done. With a hostile Supreme Court on the campaign finance front, Durbin was unfazed. "We still need to do this," he said, regardless of the Court. "I don't think we're sunk, not at all."

With folks like Sen. Ken Salazar saying we need to do something on campaign finance reform, and Durbin and Specter in the lead, 2009 is shaping up to be a big and critical year to move forward in changing how we finance federal elections.