After an uphill battle throughout this legislative session, the bill for public financing finally came up for a vote on the Senate floor last Friday afternoon. In a 23-24 vote the Senate rejected SB 546 - a result that was encouragingly close, yet also immensely disappointing.

In the end it came down to one vote. What is especially frustrating about the closeness of the vote was losing a co-sponsor at the last minute when Sen. Currie folded under pressure from the ever-powerful Senate President Mike Miller.

While much has been said (in my own posts and by others) about the role Miller and Currie had in killing the bill, it looks like the real enemy of the legislation was Sen. Bobby Zirkin. As a Delegate, Zirkin voted for the bill, but apparently now he's changed his tune.

After passing the bill with a "favorable" note in committee on Wednesday, the Maryland Senate will soon consider whether to adopt "Clean Elections," the public funding of state legislative elections. The powerful Senate President, Mike Miller, has thrown his considerable weight behind the defeat of the bill. It's not clear why, but he's given some indications.

First let's look at what the bill does: modeled on the successful systems in Maine and Arizona (and the approved-and-soon-to-be-launched system in Connecticut), it creates a voluntary system for candidates for the General Assembly to qualify for and receive public funding to run their campaigns in the primary and general election. To do that, they must show a base of support by collecting a threshold number of small contributions. If this sounds familiar, it's because Sens. Durbin and Specter just introduced the Fair Elections Now Act in Congress, and Adam B's excellent summary on DKos of that bill serves well to describe the process that is mimicked in the Maryland bill (SB 546).

Indeed, it's a powerful reform to sever the direct link between special interest money and candidates for legislative office.