Jeff Zeleny at the NYTimes Blog reports:
Senator Barack Obama, as he becomes his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, is starting to exert his authority over the Democratic National Committee. A first step? New fund-raising guidelines.
Mr. Obama is announcing today that the D.N.C. will no longer accept contributions from federal lobbyists or political action committees, which follows […]

WZTV in Tennessee reports:
A campaign finance reform bill to make it harder for candidates to hide the source of their campaign finances appeared to be dead as the 2008 regular session of the Legislature neared an end.

From The Salt Lake Tribune in Utah, a report begins:
The state’s 8-year-old electronic campaign finance reporting system is getting an overhaul, but for now, candidates can change or delete entries to their online documents without explanation or a visible trail.

Boston.com reports:
MONTPELIER, Vt.—Gov. Jim Douglas on Friday vetoed the Legislature’s latest effort to limit the influence of big money in politics, as well as an instant-runoff voting bill.

Douglas said his veto of the campaign finance bill was mainly due to his opposition to a provision limiting the amounts political parties can donate to campaigns. The […]

The NYTimes reports today:  
Taking advantage of his financial edge, Senator Barack Obama is buying large amounts of advertising and building extensive get-out-the-vote operations in an effort to end Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s candidacy with twin defeats Tuesday in Ohio and Texas.  
The intensity of Mr. Obama’s drive is especially apparent on television, where he has […]

The Kansas City Star’s David Klepper writes: 
The Kansas House on Friday passed campaign finance bills to require political action committees to give more details about how they spend money and to clarify spending rules for candidates.
All four bills passed easily and now go to the Senate for consideration.
The most significant bill, HB 2408, would require political […]

From the Columbia Tribune Politics Blog:
The Missouri Senate gave initial approval by a voice vote Wednesday to legislation that would rescind caps on campaign contributions. … The bill would also require campaigns accepting donations of $5,000 or more to list the contribution online within 48 hours.
 

In “Stealthy Groups Shake Up Races“, The Wall Street Journal writes about the various outside organizations that are spending lots of money this election outside of candidates and their campaigns:

Since the 2002 campaign-finance reforms, people who want to influence elections have looked for new ways. Most of their early organizations, like the Swift Boat group, […]

From Vermont, another take: “Campaign finance reform bill moving quickly through Legislature”
From Louisianna, an opinion: ”Jindal Ethics Flap Demands Louisiana Campaign Finance Reform”
From Minnesota, an explanation: ”The state reimburses some political donations.” Here, it is explained that citizens can get reimbursements for contributions made to candidates and parties (including the DFL - the Democratic-Farmer-Labour party).
The money comes […]

CQ reports on the political stalemate that has left the FEC without enough of commissioners to have a quorum.

Democrats trying to figure out how to pay campaign consultants, the NYTimes reports.

“Fundraising Central: Majority of Presidential Bundlers and Other Fundraisers Hail from Only Five U.S. Industries: Lawyers and Law Firms, Three Finance Industries, and Real Estate,” CFI reports.

The $800k that was found by Argetine customs officials in August, which was subsequently said to have been contributions from the Venezuelan government to Cristina Fernandez’s presidential campaign and led to firings and resignations in the Argentine government and in the Argentine branch of the Venezuelan oil company, has erupted into a larger international row […]

This week Feingold and collaborators released more information about their designs to resurrect the public financing system for presidential candidates, reports The Trail. The details:
The legislation would dramatically increase the amount of matching funds candidates received during the presidential primaries. Right now, candidates who opt to accept public financing (only John Edwards and Tom Tancredo […]

Obama’s Hopefund PAC has been donating to state and local candidates in key primary states, reports today’s Washingon Post. A snippet:  
Scott Thomas, a Democrat and a former FEC chairman, said “there’s probably no doubt” the PAC donations were aimed at increasing support for Obama’s presidential race. “But in my experience, the commission has not […]

The NYTimes posted a front page article on how FEC and Supreme Court decisions has led — and will continue to lead — to a “shift away from 527 groups toward operating in the form of nonprofit, educational organizations” as a way for non-profits to spend unlimited amounts in the upcoming election (purportedly but not […]

This month’s PS includes Werner and Mayer’s “Public Election Funding, Competition, and Candidate Gender,” an analysis of which candidates accept public funding for their campaigns to the Maine and Arizona state legislators (or which candidate do not accept such funding, and opt to finance themselves). Controlling for a variety of district-level and candidate-level characteristics (including partisanship, incumbency, […]

The AP writes about Conservatives’ new answer to Moveon.org:
Now, a group of conservatives and Republicans with close ties to the White House have formed their own enterprise, Freedom’s Watch, landing on the political scene with a $15 million ad campaign to defend President Bush’s Iraq war strategy.
But this is just the start. Its organizers don’t […]

Newt Gingrich complained on ABC and Fox this week about the campaign finance laws that would require him to quit his non-profit, Bloomberg.com writes:  
Gingrich said on ABC’s “This Week’’ program that legal opinions he sought led him to conclude he can’t run for president and lead American Solutions for Winning the Future, a tax-exempt […]

New Jersey’s “trial” public financing system - in which state legislative candidates in three of the 120 districts will be eligible for state funding - is underway for the November election. Newsday.com reports:
This is New Jersey’s second effort at public campaign financing for legislators. A 2005 effort sputtered when the program proved too complicated, but […]