COLUMBIA FALLS, Montana--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.”
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.
