I’ve never been in favor of public financing of campaigns, because of one very simple reason:
Independents can also participate in the program, but would get less money.
And everyone thought that public financing will clean up politics. It will not.  It’ll just allow the current set of politicians and government bureaucrats decide who will get the money. That’s too much power to have in the hands of government anyway.
The desire to get special interests out of politics is a desire of those in power to insulate themselves from criticism, and not have to work as hard to hold their seats. Everyone is a special interest, and we have a constitutional right to lobby our government, and I do believe that means I have a right to give however much money I want, either directly, or through interest groups, in support of candidates who agree with me on the issues.