This just in from Nick Nyhart, Public Campaign's executive director, who has been watching the Connecticut legislature into the wee hours. Thanks to everyone who helped make this victory possible by participating in our "saving Connecticut" campaign.

It’s past one in the morning, but there’s news worth telling from Connecticut. At 11:59 this evening, with just one minute left in the session, the Connecticut legislature passed a crucial fix that will strengthen and preserve last year’s landmark Clean Elections law.

In late 2005, state lawmakers passed the strongest campaign finance measure in the country, featuring full public financing for all state elective offices. But there were several flaws in the bill that needed correction, including one that would have allowed any judge’s temporary court injunction to render the bill null and void for good. After an extended battle to pass the measure in 2005, including three special sessions of the state’s General Assembly, lawmakers were slow to revisit the issue in 2006.

In fact, as the legislature approached its final day Wednesday, no agreements had been reached in either the state’s Senate or House to do any kind of 2006 reform of the 2005 reform bill. But late in the afternoon, an agreement in principle emerged that would correct the court issue, close the major loophole, and allow more equitable treatment of third party candidates. House and Senate leaders and the Governor were all apparently on the same page, finally, with reformers, led by Connecticut Common Cause and the Connecticut Citizen Action Group. But later in the evening the agreement broke down because of political differences unrelated to public financing.

Still reform leaders pressed for a solution. At approximately 10:45 the Senate agreed to move a bill. At 11:45, after a 30-minute recess to allow the 70-page fix up measure to be printed, the Senate took up the bill, At 11:50 they passed it unanimously and suspended rules to transmit it to the House.

The House took it up at 11:55. The minority leader rose to speak on the bill. He said he would be brief to allow a vote before the session expired at midnight. He lamented the fact that he had been handed a 70-page bill with five minutes to consider it (and the man certainly had a point). At about 11:57 he sat down and the vote was called. The bill passed 122-23 and the 2005 Connecticut Clean Elections victory was made better and more sustainable at 11:59. Then they adjourned for the year.

This victory was a tribute to the staying power of Connecticut reformers and to grassroots pressure. But it also came to be because the Connecticut lawmakers finally and fully made good on their commitments from last year. With so much corruption in Washington DC, it’s good to see politicians and reformers in Connecticut coming together and producing sweeping legislation rather than sham measures that barely skim the surface of real change. Beltway, take note.

--Nick Nyhart, executive director, Public Campaign