Washington Senator Introduces Bill to Bar Corporate Election Spending

The 2024 election was the most expensive in American history. Outside groups — super PACs, dark money nonprofits, and corporate-backed political action committees — poured a record $4.5 billion into federal races, with more than half coming from organizations that do not fully disclose where their money originates [1]. Dark money alone hit $1.9 billion, nearly doubling the previous record set just four years earlier [2].

Now, as the 2026 midterms approach, a growing coalition of Democratic lawmakers is mounting the most ambitious push in years to sever the pipeline between corporate treasuries and American ballot boxes. From outright bans on corporate PACs to constitutional amendments and a novel state-level maneuver in Montana, the fight over money in politics is entering a new and potentially decisive phase.

The Ban Corporate PACs Act: Cutting the Pipeline

On July 29, 2025, Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), and Representative Josh Harder (D-CA) reintroduced the Ban Corporate PACs Act, with cosponsors including Senators Andy Kim (D-NJ) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) [3]. The bill, originally introduced by Kelly and Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) in 2022, takes the most direct approach to limiting corporate influence: it would flatly prohibit for-profit corporations from establishing or managing political action committees [4].

The legislation has three core provisions. First, it would eliminate the ability of for-profit corporations to create and manage PACs. Second, it would bar corporations and their PACs from soliciting contributions from corporate stockholders. Third, it would require all existing corporate PACs to terminate operations and fully disburse their remaining funds within one year of enactment [4].

"Corporate money has way too much control over what happens in Washington, and that's not how it should work," Senator Kelly said in a statement accompanying the reintroduction [3]. Senator Slotkin, who has never accepted corporate PAC contributions, framed the issue in starker terms: "Today, I'm one of just six U.S. Senators who has never taken these big corporate PAC checks. That number should be 100 out of 100" [3].

The scale of the problem the bill targets is staggering. During the 2023-2024 election cycle, political action committees raised approximately $15.7 billion and spent $15.5 billion, with PAC spending accounting for the majority of total election expenditures [5]. Shell companies and 501(c) nonprofits that did not disclose their funding sources contributed $1.3 billion to super PACs alone — more than in the prior two election cycles combined [1].

Source: OpenSecrets / Federal Election Commission

Data as of Jan 21, 2025CSV

The DISCLOSE Act: Shining Light on Dark Money

While the Ban Corporate PACs Act aims to cut off corporate spending at its source, the DISCLOSE Act of 2026 — reintroduced on March 4, 2026, by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Representative Chris Pappas (D-NH), and 182 congressional colleagues — focuses on transparency [6]. The legislation, whose acronym stands for "Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections," would require organizations spending money to influence elections to disclose their donors publicly.

The 2026 version includes notable updates reflecting the evolving landscape of political advertising. It would capture payments made to social media influencers to promote or oppose a candidate as political spending subject to disclosure requirements — a first in federal campaign finance law [6]. It also expands "stand by your ad" rules to online political advertisements and narrowly defines what constitutes threats and harassment qualifying for disclosure exemptions [7].

All 47 senators who caucus with Democrats have signed on as sponsors, along with 139 House Democrats [6]. The bill's broad coalition reflects a unified Democratic front on the issue, though it faces the same fundamental obstacle as its predecessors: Republican opposition.

The DISCLOSE Act has been introduced in every Congress since 2010, following the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. FEC decision. It passed the House in 2010 but has been blocked by Republican filibusters in the Senate every time [8]. Dark money expenditures have grown from less than $5 million in 2006 to more than $1.9 billion in 2024, underscoring the urgency that supporters say makes this legislation critical [2][6].

The Constitutional Route

Perhaps the most sweeping — and most difficult — reform effort is H.J.Res. 119, a proposed constitutional amendment introduced in the 119th Congress that would explicitly prohibit corporate spending in the political process [9]. The resolution would:

• Ban any corporation or entity created by law from contributing to or spending money to influence federal elections
• Require Congress to develop a public campaign financing system covering at least 80% of what candidates may spend
• Empower states to set their own reasonable limits on campaign contributions and spending in state and local elections [9]

The amendment was referred to the House Judiciary Committee and faces astronomical odds. Constitutional amendments require two-thirds approval in both chambers of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures — a bar so high that only 27 amendments have been ratified in nearly 250 years of American history.

Yet the proposal reflects a deepening conviction among reformers that the Citizens United framework cannot be adequately addressed through ordinary legislation alone.

Montana's Quiet Revolution

While Congress debates, Montana is pursuing what may be the most innovative approach to corporate election spending in the country. A bipartisan team of former state officials, led by former Federal Election Commission counsel Tom Moore, has designed a ballot initiative targeting not corporate rights but corporate powers [10][11].

The legal theory is deceptively simple. Corporations are creatures of state law — they possess only the powers that state charters grant them. Under the proposed Transparent Election Initiative, Montana would amend its state constitution to strip corporations of the power to spend money on elections or ballot issues. Since out-of-state corporations can only exercise the powers that domestic corporations possess, the ban would effectively apply to every corporation operating in Montana [10].

"A corporation is an artificial being...possessing only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it," Moore has argued, citing Supreme Court precedent dating to Dartmouth v. Woodward (1819) [11].

The approach has deep historical resonance in Montana. The state banned corporate political contributions in 1912 — a law that endured for nearly a century before Citizens United invalidated it [11]. Polling shows 74% of Montanans support the initiative, including 84% of Democrats, 69% of Republicans, and 64% of independents [12].

However, the initiative has encountered procedural hurdles. Montana's attorney general and the state Supreme Court found the initial version legally insufficient under state constitutional rules, and organizers are refiling revised versions in hopes of qualifying for the November 2026 ballot [12].

If Montana succeeds, it could create a template for other states to follow — a state-by-state strategy to neutralize Citizens United without requiring a constitutional amendment or an act of Congress.

The Opposition: Free Speech and the First Amendment

Republican opposition to campaign finance restrictions is grounded in First Amendment jurisprudence and a philosophical commitment to deregulating political speech. The party's platform explicitly supports "repeal of federal restrictions on political parties," the raising or elimination of contribution limits, and the protection of "political speech of advocacy groups, corporations, and labor unions" [13].

The Supreme Court's 5-4 Citizens United decision in 2010 established the constitutional framework for this position, ruling that restrictions on independent expenditures by corporations and unions violate the First Amendment. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion held that "the First Amendment protects associations of individuals as well as individual speakers," and that corporations, as associations, hold speech rights [14].

The American Civil Liberties Union has also expressed concerns about some campaign finance regulations, arguing that restrictions on spending can function as restrictions on speech itself [13]. "If you're telling someone they can't pay any money to help broadcast their speech, that's the same thing as limiting their speech," runs the conservative legal argument [13].

In practical political terms, campaign finance reform legislation faces near-zero prospects in a Republican-controlled Congress. No Republican senator has cosponsored either the Ban Corporate PACs Act or the DISCLOSE Act, and the constitutional amendment lacks bipartisan support in the House.

Source: Brennan Center for Justice / OpenSecrets

Data as of Feb 18, 2025CSV

The Coordination Problem

Beyond the volume of spending, reform advocates point to a growing coordination crisis between outside groups and campaigns. The Campaign Legal Center has documented cases where super PACs — which are legally barred from coordinating with candidates — have done precisely that while "facing no accountability" [15].

In one case highlighted by the organization, an entity called "Building our Future Today, LLC" made over $2.5 million in political contributions just two months after its creation, existing "only on paper" to conceal the actual donors behind the money [15]. Such straw donor schemes represent a direct violation of existing campaign finance law, yet enforcement remains inconsistent.

The Federal Election Commission, which is charged with enforcing campaign finance law, has been criticized for chronic dysfunction. Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) have reintroduced the Restoring Integrity to America's Elections Act, which aims to break the partisan gridlock that has paralyzed the six-member commission for years [16]. They have also proposed the EMPOWER Act, which would modernize the presidential public financing system and amplify the power of small-dollar donors [16].

What the Numbers Tell Us

The trajectory of outside spending in American elections tells a story of exponential growth. Before Citizens United, outside spending in the 2008 cycle was approximately $140 million in independent expenditures. By 2012, the first presidential election after the ruling, that figure had surged to approximately $1.3 billion. It reached roughly $1.4 billion in 2016, $3.3 billion in 2020, and an unprecedented $4.5 billion in 2024 [1][17].

Dark money has followed a similar trajectory. Contributions from undisclosed sources to super PACs grew from less than $71.7 million in 2016 to $653 million in 2020 and then $1.3 billion in 2024 [1]. The Brennan Center for Justice has called this "the most secretive election since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision" [2].

Future Forward USA PAC, the cycle's top spender, reported expenditures of approximately $517 million on the 2024 presidential race, with more than $136 million arriving as unnamed contributions from its allied dark money group, Future Forward USA Action [1]. On the Republican side, comparable groups similarly relied on undisclosed funding sources, though at somewhat lower overall spending levels.

The Road Ahead

The multi-front campaign against corporate election spending reflects both the urgency reformers feel and the structural obstacles they face. Federal legislation requires overcoming Republican opposition that shows no sign of softening. A constitutional amendment demands supermajority consensus that does not exist. State-level strategies like Montana's face legal challenges and uncertain timelines.

Yet the reformers draw encouragement from polling data showing broad public support for limiting money in politics. A 2025 survey found that nearly three in four Montanans backed the Transparent Election Initiative across party lines [12]. National polls have consistently shown that large majorities of Americans — including Republicans — believe there is too much money in politics and that wealthy donors have disproportionate influence.

The question is whether that public sentiment can be converted into political action against entrenched interests that benefit from the current system — interests that, as the numbers show, are spending more than ever to maintain it.