Opponents of Arizona’s system of publicly financing candidate campaigns secured an important victory Monday, when a panel of lawmakers approved a ballot measure to eliminate it.

An Aug. 31 deadline has been set for applicants for one vacant post on the five-member Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission.

Arizona’s system of public campaign financing has been dealt a major, although expected, blow by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled June 27 that the matching funds provision of the Clean Elections Act is unconstitutional.

Local political consultants and operatives disagree on what effect the U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the matching funds component of Arizona’s public campaign finance option will have on politics.

If voters choose to permanently scrap public financing for campaigns in November 2012, proponents of higher campaign contribution limits may find themselves trying to answer a tricky question: How do you further the intent of a law that no longer exists?

They’re hoping they don’t have to find out.

After years of having nothing to show for their legislative efforts to dismantle Arizona’s public campaign financing system, state business leaders and other opponents of Clean Elections enlisted the help of an unlikely ally.

On April 18, the Senate refered SCR1025 to the 2012 ballot. The success of the measure, which would ask voters to effectively gut Arizona’s embattled 13-year-old public finance system for legislative and statewide office candidates, can largely be attributed to one of Clean Election’s most ardent supporters.

The United States Supreme Court will soon decide just how far a government can wade into electoral politics with the use of public campaign financing, as members of the court on Monday heard arguments from opponents and defenders of Arizona’s public campaign finance system.

The United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Monday whether Arizona’s Clean Elections system can legally provide matching funds to candidates.

Opponents of Arizona’s Clean Elections system are optimistic about the latest measure to effectively kill public campaign financing in Arizona. The House, where similar measures have died in the past, has a Republican supermajority of legislators elected on promises of fiscal responsibility. Now is the perfect time, they say, to pass a measure they call the “No Taxpayer Subsidies for Political Campaigns Act.” But there is a catch: Nine of the chamber’s 15 new Republicans were elected using publicly paid-for campaigns, and not all of them are enlisting in the stop-Clean-Elections crusade.

The Arizona Senate wants voters to decide whether to bar the use of public money for candidates’ campaigns.