Speaking of North Carolina, Chapel Hill may become the state's first municipality to offer a full public financing option for city council races. The state legislature has approved the idea, now the council is debating it. Cities like Portland, Oregon and Albuquerque, New Mexico offer a full public financing option and officials in more cities (like Los Angeles and New York) are proposing similar programs as the cost of running for office goes up and closes more people out.

From the Raleigh News and Observer this morning an editorial lauding the state's existing public financing programs for campaigns in the state and encouraging further expansion of these programs as fast as possible.

The generally conservative 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected challenges to North Carolina's full public financing program for judicial elections and upheld the law that put Clean Elections-style financing of judicial races on the map.  This is great news for North Carolina and the popular public financing program, which this year has been expanded to include three Council of State positions (the state Cabinet).

Hearings on a new full public financing program for elections in Chapel Hill, North Carolina are getting underway after a long effort by town council member Mark Kleinschmidt to get attention to the issue.  The North Carolina Assembly has opened the door for Chapel Hill to pursue this on a pilot basis, we'll see if it goes all the way.

North Carolina's Independent Weekly covers the full public financing pilot program that applies to three Council of State races this year, and talks to candidates about how their run with public funding will diverge from the traditional campaign model.

A group of Clean Elections supporters in Greensboro, North Carolina are organizing to bring full public financing of elections to their city, following in the path of Albuquerque, New Mexico and Portland, Oregon, as well as public financing programs for North Carolina's judicial races and three Council of State races, as well as a new program in the works for Chapel Hill. As the cost of running for office escalates, there is concern that running for office is becoming prohibitively expensive for would-be candidates.