Eight votes. That’s the big story coming out of Iowa from last night’s caucuses.

We knew that a lot of money would be spent in the 2012 elections. And a story today from Talking Points Memo (TPM) shows just how much (that we know of) has been spent, and how it's only going to get worse as we move forward in the campaign.

The Iowa Independent reports this morning that new Iowa State Senator Sandy Greiner (R-Keota) will keep her position as president of the American Future Fund, an organization that spent $9.6 million (undisclosed) on federal races around the country in 2010. This decision is taking some heat.

Like we've seen with the meltdown of the financial sector, a lack of regulation leads to problems. Too often, deregulation and lack of oversight are lobbied by the industries forking over big bucks in campaign contributions to make sure they get what they want. In a column from Iowa this weekend, an advocate for senior citizens looks at the nursing home industry in the same light.

Support for Clean Elections, or full public financing of elections, has broad support across political parties and other demographics. On Saturday, Tim Urban had an op-ed published in the Des Moines Business Record showing support is also strong among those investing financially in the political process--campaign donors.

This article in the Telegraph Herald begins with an examination of the eye-opening results from last week's Iowa caucus and wraps with a mention of the unprecedented spending by presidential candidates in Iowa fueling chances for the Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections Act (VOICE Act) in this year's legislative session.

Presidential candidates are hatching all kinds of schemes to get their supporters to the Iowa caucuses tonight, including apparently mobilizing snow plows to help stranded would-be-voters. No doubt several Iowans would rather the candidates help them dig out from the campaign advertising under which which the state has been blanketed thanks to record fundraising and record spending.

The big campaign money story to come out of tonight's Iowa caucuses may be the contest between Republicans Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Romney has vastly out-raised and out-spent Huckabee, but polls give Huckabee the edge on public support in Iowa. What are the implications of a contest between these two kinds of candidates for a larger debate on the wealth primary?

Susan Milligan at the Boston Globe lays out the money dynamic at this stage:

Our allies in the fight for Clean Elections, Common Cause, have just a launched a new newspaper ad campaign in Iowa to draw attention to the problem of special interest money in elections and press the presidential candidates to take a firm stand in support of full public financing of elections. See the ad, and read more about the campaign at Common Blog.

Support for full public financing of elections graced a few editorial pages over the weekend with the Des Moines Register and the Syracuse Post-Standard both running letters to the editor in support of state and federal level Clean Elections-style proposals. Thanks to Susan West and G.T. Gerrard, respectively, for submitting those letters!