By Brad Brooks
COLUMBIA FALLS, Montana, Sept 16 (Reuters) - More than 15 years after the U.S. Supreme Court reshaped American politics with its Citizens United campaign finance ruling, Montana voters will decide this November whether to make their state the first in the nation to bar corporations from spending money on elections through a ballot initiative.
It's a test case for a novel legal strategy that sidesteps the 2010 ruling rather than challenging it head-on -- and taps into growing, bipartisan
anger over the pervasiveness of so-called dark money in elections.
“Americans are losing the belief that they have any influence over our politics,” said Tom Moore, a lawyer with the Center for American Progress left-leaning think tank in Washington and the legal architect of the movement.
With similar, coordinated efforts underway in over 30 states, Montana could help set a critical precedent, experts say, and potentially lead to another showdown at the Supreme Court. Hawaii’s legislature passed a similar law earlier this year, inspired by those behind the effort here.
That the measure made the ballot in Montana, a deeply conservative state that President Donald Trump won by nearly 20 points in 2024, may seem surprising at first. But in a place where robber barons once ran wild, people remain deeply suspicious of money in politics, according to interviews with voters, historians and political scientists.
It’s a sentiment widely shared across the United States. A Brennan Center for Justice survey this year found 79% of Americans across parties would support a constitutional amendment to restore limits on political spending.
No independent public polling has been done on Initiative 194, dubbed the “Montana Plan." It has been championed by populist Democrat Sam Forstag in his run for the U.S. House of Representatives and former Republican Governor Marc Racicot, though the state Republican party and some business groups are opposed.
Steve Hadnagy, a self-described conservative libertarian in the copper-mining town of Butte, said he plans to vote “yes” on I-194 to prevent corporate money flowing in from out of state.
"They're dumping millions of dollars into elections here, setting up the candidates they want in power who will do what they ask," he said. “I think people want to do something about it.”
DARK MONEY
In Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations and unions have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited money on elections independent of individual campaigns – giving rise to super PACs and 501(c)(4) nonprofits, or C4s, which can spend unlimited "dark money" on elections without disclosing their donors.
Known corporate contributions to federal outside political groups rose from $13 million in 2010 to more than $600 million so far this year, according to OpenSecrets.
In Montana, independent political expenditures rose from $33,000 in 2008 to $162 million in 2024, according to the Transparent Election Initiative, the group behind the Montana Plan, based on OpenSecrets data. And that’s just the money that’s possible to track.
"No one knows how much corporate spending is pouring into elections,” said Craig Holman, a longtime campaign finance expert at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.
The Montana Plan doesn't attempt to overturn Citizens United -- it works around it by targeting corporate powers rather than corporate rights. Corporate powers are granted by state governments, which have the authority to redefine or revoke them.
I-194 would bar all “artificial persons” from political spending, including unions, C4s and any corporation doing business in the state, even if they're not chartered in Montana.
It would not stop wealthy individuals from spending freely -- but they would no longer be able to do so anonymously.
LEGAL SCRUTINY
Opposition to the plan has been led by Montana’s business community.
Lorraine Clarno, CEO of the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce, said her group has used contributions from local businesses to educate the public about other ballot measures, from school levies to jail funding.
The Montana Chamber of Commerce filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to keep the initiative off the ballot and its president, Todd O'Hair, said he views I-194 as plainly unconstitutional.
Legal experts are split.
Loyola University law professor Justin Levitt called the initiative “bold and unusual,” saying it could force the Supreme Court to weigh the free-speech rights it granted corporations in 2010 against decades of legal precedent upholding the states’ power to define what corporations are permitted to do.
Richard Hasen, a UCLA law professor, is more skeptical of the effort -- calling it "an end run" around Citizens United that is likely to be rejected by the court's conservative majority.
There’s no question that what happens here could reverberate widely. Versions of I-194 are active or under consideration in some 32 states, either as potential ballot initiatives or pending legislation, according to Moore, who works directly with organizers nationwide.
‘THE POWER OF THE BALLOT’
Distrust of corporate power runs deep in Montana.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, mining barons known as the Copper Kings bribed their way through the state legislature and bought a U.S. Senate seat, a scandal still taught in local schools.
Montana voters responded in 1912 by passing the Corrupt Practices Act -- also by ballot initiative -- outright banning corporate election spending. The law held until it was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012.
Brenda Wahler, a fourth-generation Montanan and historian, said the big copper companies fought tooth and nail against the 1912 measure. It didn’t matter.
"People in Montana have used the power of the ballot to take back power for well over 100 years," Wahler said.
Former Forest Service smokejumper and union leader Forstag, a Democrat running for Montana’s 1st Congressional District, has made the initiative central to his campaign.
“This is the issue that’s woven throughout all of the broken systems that we’re stuck on the wrong end of as working people,” Forstag said in an interview during a campaign stop in Columbia Falls. This formerly blue-collar town was built around a now-shuttered aluminum factory, and locals complain they’re being priced out by wealthy transplants from Texas and California.
Independent voter Keith Meehan, 52, snagged a pro-Montana Plan yard sign at Forstag’s rally and sank it into his front yard. He recalled a time when elections weren’t just determined by negative fliers, robocalls and TV advertisements.
“People used to listen to what every candidate had to say,” he said. “It would be awesome to have a more level playing field again.”
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Montana; Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and Alistair Bell)
