I suspect this won't work without Republican contributors joining the effort, but at least they're trying:

A group of 27 major donors is vowing to withhold campaign cash from lawmakers who stand in the way of legislation that would allow for public funding of congressional campaigns. Over their careers, the donors have contributed millions to Democratic candidates -- and, on limited occasions, Republicans or independents -- but they say they've had it. And they don't mind if it means a lack of access.

Steve Kirsch kicked in roughly $10 million to try to elect Al Gore in 2000. "It is a trade off, because there are a lot of good things you can talk to them about, but most of the time they don't do anything about it anyway. Given the choice, I'd rather have campaign finance reform than access," said Kirsch, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and founder of Infoseek, among other companies.

The millions that the donors have given is just the beginning, and doesn't include the millions more they've funneled by organizing fundraisers or otherwise corralling contributions.

The 27 donors plan to lobby other rich folks to sign on, with a plan of passing the Fair Elections Now Act, which has 149 cosponsors, this year. The campaign's being run by Change Congress, co-founded by Lawrence Lessig and Joe Trippi, along with Common Cause and the Public Campaign Action Fund.

ChangeCongress, now that the effort is public, will be encouraging donors to pledge. Read the letter here.

It was kicked off by donors Alan Hassenfeld, the former chairman of Hasbro, and Arnold Hiatt, the former head of the Stride Rite Corporation. The pair wrote to friends and colleagues, urging them to stop giving.

"We're writing with a very unusual request -- that you pledge not to give any campaign contributions to any candidate for Congress until they have committed to support public funding for congressional elections," they wrote. "Once we have a critical mass of large contributors who have signed this pledge, the partner organizations will then launch an Internet-based campaign to get others to join as well. A pilot of this program was initiated last year. Very quickly, tens of thousands committed to the pledge. ChangeCongress.org's technology will enable us to estimate the value of their pledges, and whom it hits directly. The site will also make it easy for pledgers to lobby Senators and Representatives to join the bill."

The pair said they were sad to have to take the step. "If, 15 months into the Obama Administration, we were looking at a long list of accomplishments, with a long list of probable victories coming -- as many of us dreamed last November -- then we would not be asking you to take this step. But the picture is not nearly so promising because of the power of private money in the political system. We have all been part of that system. It is time for us to take the lead to change it," they wrote.

[...] Kirsch said that the access his money buys -- and the access he could lose -- is overrated. With so many donors with so many opinions, the best they can do is nod, offer to look into it, and put a donor in touch with a staff member. "In the meeting, they say they agree completely," said Kirsch. "'Let me do more research and thinking. Thanks for bringing to my attention.' There tends not to be a lot of follow through."

I am totally against the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, because to me "free speech" has turned into a bought-and-paid-for commodity, but there are arguments from the left on both sides of the issue.

I've had some experience with trying to buy ad space during elections, and as the days creep closer to one, the ad space becomes more expensive, for the most part. At least in my experience.

My question is what happens when Big Corp decides to buy up the last month, or two or three, of available ad space on all major media outlets for a particular election? That would have an incredible impact on either an election or like we have in California, a proposition. We saw what happened when the Mormons bought up a ton of air time in California to oppose Prop. 8

We need regulations in politics, just like we need them for Wall Street and just like we need them when you buy a car. Hopefully, Congress will act and pass much needed legislation to help preserve our Democratic process. It already is deeply flawed, but this ruling only makes it worse.

From an email by ChangeCongress:

We've got great news to report about our campaign shaming Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) for taking $700,000 from the defense industry and Chamber of Commerce and then siding with them against rape victims and his constituents. Thousands of people have signed our national expression of outrage and told their friends to sign -- and the national and local media are reporting on our campaign!

We need to keep the momentum up. Can you check out our petition and sign today?

From the National Journal:

Reform group Change Congress launched a campaign yesterday to shame Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., for voting against legislation that would help ensure victims of rape have the right to bring their case to court. The government reform group hit cyberspace with an email asking people to sign a 'national expression of outrage.' Citing $700,000 in campaign contributions from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the defense industry, Change Congress accused Burr of putting special interests before rape victims.

The more signatures we get, the more the media will report on his campaign. We need to keep publicly shaming these politicians one by one until Congress realizes it's time to replace special-interest-funded elections with citizen-funded elections.

Until they do, Americans will continue to ask: Did you vote that way because it made good sense, or because it raised special-interest campaign dollars?