Sen. George Voinovich, Ethics Committee chairman and a sometime gadfly to Republican leadership, is warming to Democratic-backed proposals for public financing of federal elections.

Voinovich (R-Ohio) told The Hill that he has met with Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) to discuss collaboration on the public-financing pitch Durbin is crafting with Sen. Chris Dodd (Conn.), the Rules Committee’s ranking Democrat. Snagging the endorsement of Voinovich, who last year bucked his party by opposing the confirmation of U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and has so far taken a supporting role in the GOP’s push for lobbying reform, could give the public-financing concept considerable momentum.

“Maybe it is the answer,” Voinovich said. “Too much of our time is spent raising money, time spent campaigning, time buying TV ads. When everyone’s out there trying to raise money, dialing for dollars ... until we deal with this issue you’re going to continue to have problems.”

Voinovich’s enthusiasm for a public financing system, versions of which have been instituted at state and local levels in seven states, comes as Republicans continue to hammer out a lobbying-reform package that can be swiftly marked up after this week’s recess.

Public financing is unlikely to show up in either the Senate or House leadership’s lobbying and ethics overhauls, but Voinovich joins a growing chorus of members seeking to add new campaign-finance restrictions to any broader institutional cleanup effort.

Voinovich said he has sent Ethics Committee staffers to meetings of the lobbying-reform working group convened by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who has said he wants a bill taken to the floor by the week of March 6. Rather than indicating his support for tighter limits on member travel or lobbyist-paid gifts, as leaders of both parties have suggested, Voinovich emphasized the lack of enforcement of existing lobbying rules.

“How are we enforcing our laws? Things are filed, and, in some cases, nothing’s done about it,” Voinovich lamented, calling the notion of exempting lobbyist-sponsored fundraisers from the congressional gift ban “ridiculous.”

Many lobbyists privately resent the mounting burden of disbursing cash to influential lawmakers, and several members have recently moved to cut ties to K Street by dropping lobbyists from long-held leadership PAC positions. Still, the lobbying industry has not given its blessing to the marriage of campaign-finance and lobbying provisions.

“Once you start crossing and clouding the lines between campaign finance and lobbying reform, you’re sending mixed messages and going to get a bill that’s probably not going to pass, or going to be so weighed down with things that it will be too complicated,” said Paul Miller, president of the American League of Lobbyists (ALL) and a partner at Miller/Wenhold Capitol Strategies.

Miller called the public-financing concept “nice on paper,” criticizing elements of the House public-financing bill introduced last month by Reps. David Obey (D-Wis.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.). The Obey-Frank proposal would raise money for federal campaigns through a Federal Election Commission (FEC) advertising campaign supplemented by a levy of one-tenth of 1 percent on corporate profits exceeding $10 million.

“To say, ‘To pay for this, we’re going to tax corporate America,’ I don’t think that’s fair,” Miller said. “You’d have to do the other side of it and tax labor too, since labor will be paying for this as well.”

Obey said that even Republican support for public financing would have little practical effect on its legislative future.

“I’d be amazed” if more Republicans latched on to the concept, Obey said, painting Voinovich as an anomaly in the GOP. “It’s natural for Republicans to have some division on it. It’s natural for us to have some division on it.”

Durbin and Dodd have yet to release specifics of their public-financing plan, but Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker said it would likely borrow from the Obey-Frank bill.

Durbin is “open to a broad range of ideas here, but he feels that the heart of the lobbying reform question is still money,” Shoemaker said. “Until we do something about the No. 1 incentive to raise all that money, which is the cost of TV advertising, we’re not going to be able to effect long-term, solid, workable lobbying reform.”

Durbin and Voinovich have maintained close relations since leading the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s government-management panel during the 108th Congress, though Durbin is no longer a committee member.

Dodd shares Durbin’s goal of attracting Republican support for their take on public financing, according to his spokeswoman, Stacie Paxton.

“Senator Dodd has discussed the issue with various senators and believes bipartisan support for such an effort is essential to its enactment,” Paxton said.

During Jan. 25 testimony before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Voinovich offered to hold an Ethics Committee hearing on the Senate’s ability to enforce existing lobbying laws, but it is unclear whether Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairwoman of the governmental-affairs panel, intends to take him up on the bid. Collins’s office did not return a call for comment by press time.

Such a hearing would be unprecedented for the Ethics Committee, which typically conducts business under a veil of secrecy and does not intervene in investigations of the executive branch. Despite that tradition, however, Voinovich and the committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Tim Johnson (S.D.), took the unusual step of publicly releasing committee correspondence Friday revealing that the Justice Department has asked the committee not to pursue action against any senators tied to the ongoing Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

“The Department of Justice has made the Committee aware that it has concerns about the impact an Ethics Committee investigation may have on the Department’s ongoing criminal investigation into Abramoff-related matters,” Voinovich and Johnson wrote in Friday’s letter, responding to an inquiry from Fred Wertheimer, president campaign-finance watchdog Democracy 21 and a public-financing supporter.