Clean up Congress... clean up Congress... clean up Congress...

Hey, did you hear something about cleaning up Congress?

You bet you did. That voice you heard might have been syndicated columnist Marie Cocco, highlighting Republican Reps. Jim Leach of Iowa and Todd Platts of Pennsylvania for signing the Voters First Pledge to make elections fair. (After her writing, Rep. Rob Simmons (R-CT) added his name to the call for public financing, too.)

But maybe that voice you heard came from Ken Dixon of the Connecticut Post who asked the "Million Dollar Election Question": how does the public fare when millionaire candidates are elected, or reelected, in our special interest-dominated political system?

Luckily, in Connecticut, Clean Elections will get a boost no matter who wins the Senate race:

And our own Celia Wexler makes it crystal clear where Common Cause stands:

Or maybe you heard the melodious voice of Public Campaign's Nick Nyhart, our ally in pushing full public financing, who made a strong case last week in the Albany Times-Union. A highlight:

No, there's not an echo in here. It's just starting to feel that way.

As part of its participation in the national Seize the Moment campaign, Connecticut Common Cause will be hosting a forum on the latest woes in Washington and how Clean Elections at the national level can help end the culture of corruption in our nation's capital.

The forum will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 19, at the Ridgefield Public Library, 472 Main St., Ridgefield, Conn. The panelists will include: Nick Nyhart, executive director of Public Campaign, Phil Sherwood, legislative director at Connecticut Citizen Action Group, and Chris Horrigan, Government Director of the Connecticut League of Women Voters. As executive director of Connecticut Common Cause, I'll be moderating. The forum is free and open to the public.

This forum gives campaign finance reform activists and supporters a unique opportunity to query the minds of the leaders of the Connecticut campaign finance reform campaign on the recent victory in Connecticut and what can be done to help achieve a similiar victory in Washington, D.C.

For more information on the forums or the Connecticut Seize the Moment campaign, go to www.commoncause.org/ctstm.

What a difference two years make.

In the summer of 2004, Connecticut Common Cause distributed a Clean Elections pledge to legislative candidates. Only 11 percent of the candidates signed the pledge. Nobody, except the true believers, wanted to touch our pledge. Clean Elections, even in the immediate aftermath of the Rowland scandal, was not a popular issue.

Of course, a little more than a year later - after a ton of grassroots, media and legislative pressure - a lot of the same people who wouldn't sign our pledge would wind up voting for the strongest campaign finance law in the nation. Nevertheless, it was with tremendous feeling of fulfillment, that I read this paragraph this morning in a story on a candidate forum in Northwest Connecticut:

Maybe it's not that big a deal that candidates after the fact are supportive of campaign finance reform (one candidate in the story actually seemed to be not so keen on Clean Elections.) But, consider this: Clean Elections is a voluntary program, and to make it work, we'll need candidates who believe in it enough to opt into it.

If we allow ourselves to read between the lines in this story, we might be able to count on a good number of candidates who run Clean in 2008.

Talk about progress...

Bill Moyer provides one of the most comprehensive looks at the Abramoff scandal and the scandal's link to the problem of money in politics in "Capitol Crimes." Those who didn't get a chance to see it, check out the Web site. It's filled with information and clips as well as a transcript of the broadcast. What is most striking are the details given about how House Republicans bullied lobbyists into not contributing to Democratic candidates.

This is very similiar to what is believed to have happened in Connecticut during the 2002 gubernatorial race. Rowland was getting an enormous amount of campaign contributions from state contractors whereas his opponent only received one contribution from a state contractor.  The Democratic state party chair, Ed Marcus, at the time openly called out the Rowland campaign for the bullying tactics: "There's no question that people who do business with the state were absolutely told, 'If you want to keep doing business with us, we'd better not see your name on a Curry financial report.' "

The bottom line, as we have always said: The corruption trail starts on the campaign trail.

As the nation approaches the last month of the election season, more and more news stories are popping up that directly reference the seeming all-important tactic of campaign fund raising.

• Yesterday, the New York Times had a story about Pres. George W. Bush's trip to generate more campaign contributions
• Congressional Quarterly today had a story about how congressional campaign committees are spending more than they usually do more than one month out from Election Day.
• The St. Petersburg Times had a personality profile on one of the nation's super fund raisers.

During the election season, campaign fund raising has become so fierce and ubiquitous no one blinks at reports of the nation's top elected official shaking down people for campaign contributions. It is just more campaign tactic to report on - one more gauge to measure a campaign's strength.