Washington, D.C. - Nick Nyhart, Public Campaign's executive director, made the following statement regarding the Senate's passage of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill and harbingers for future reform:

"The Senate's vote to pass McCain-Feingold is a crucial step towards reform, and a giant blow against politics as usual. The dogged and determined efforts of a broad citizens coalition combined with intrepid political leadership by Senators McCain and Feingold and Congressmen Shays and Meehan have overcome the last serious obstacle to the enactment of a federal soft money ban. This is good news for everyone who wants to reduce the power of big money in politics.

"It is very promising for the next stage of reform that Section 310 of the new law calls on the U.S. Comptroller General to 'study the clean money clean elections of Arizona and Maine,' the first states to implement full public financing systems, and to report back on their effects to Congress within one year.

"As Senator Feingold today emphasized during today's floor debate, 'We need to again consider public funding for congressional elections, following the very successful experience with clean money systems in Maine and Arizona.'

"Once McCain-Feingold is signed by President Bush, the reform focus will turn to the role that hard money plays in elections, and systems that give candidates the option of instead running with full public financing.

"The concept of full public financing has already been endorsed by a broad array of groups and individuals, including the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, the ACLU, the National Organization for Women, the Fannie Lou Hamer Project, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Church Women United, the Unitarian-Universalist Church, thousands of elected officials across the country, the voting public of Maine, Arizona and Massachusetts, and the legislature of Vermont. Citizen coalitions are working hard to enact this reform in nearly forty states. Now that Congress has finally voted to ban soft money, we look forward to bringing this next wave of reform to the federal level.