A little while back our two Public Campaign interns, Faye Yuan and Sarah Pinsky, attended the annual Campus Progress conference, an event put on by the Center for American Progress that builds on the involvement of young people in the political process. Given the focus of Clean Elections on encouraging involvement among people from all walks of life in politics, we thought this would be a good event for them to attend. After the jump, their report from the conference.

While the official reports aren't due at the Federal Election Commission until October 15, candidates are bragging already about the big bucks they are raking in. Hillary Clinton raised $27 million, all but $5 million of it for her primary race. Obama raised $20 million. Congressional candidates are also starting to talk big about their fundraising prowess, as if this is the main thing that matters when running a political race.

The hot campaign news these days is all about small donors recharging the political landscape, and is sure to be part of the story when candidates file their third quarter reports in mid-October. Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) already got headlines for breaking records by raising nearly a third of his contributions from donors giving $200 or less.

But make no mistake about it: big donors still dominate.

While not the most ringing endorsement of Tom Vilsack I've ever read, this editorial by Rob Poggenklass in Iowa's West Branch Times does point out the absurdity of him being dubbed a failure in the presidential race for having raised "only" a million dollars. Poggenklass lays out (broadly) the arguments for and against the "wealth primary" and concludes public financing is the way to go in the end.

It takes a lot of money to win a seat in Congress, whether you solicit the wealthy for big checks, or self-finance your bid with personal wealth, a practice Public Campaign's Nancy Watzman profiles in this piece on TomPaine.com.  Result: a Congress disproportionately comprised of the wealthy and those friendly to the wealthy. 

It's crisis time in the Republican House.Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Charlie Bass (R-NH) are circulating a letter calling for new leadership elections. They need 50 to force an election.I'll give more details when I get them.UDPATE: Roll Call...