As campaign spending flows unchecked, some states are trying to impose limits
Fifteen years after the United States Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that companies have constitutional free-minded rights to spend money to influence elections, almost all federal efforts to slow down political spending have collapsed. Most elected officials are now counting on outdoor groups, such as Super CAPs that accept unlimited donations, to help finance their campaigns.
But even as such a fundraiser beats new records – the Super CAP spent around 2.7 billion dollars during the 2024 electoral cycle – the reform defenders in two states postpone. Maine and Montana are difficult, in different ways, the interpretation by the Supreme Court of Laws on the Financing of Campaigns. That they succeed could be important for future elections – and not only in these states. The reformers hope to expose a plan to find out how states can regulate companies, unions and “dark funds” groups that play a disproportionate role in the determination of who is elected to the public service.
These efforts to reform the financing of the campaigns are in a context of what many academics call a deterioration of American democracy, recently illustrated by the partisan battle to restart legislative cards before the mid 2026. To correspond to the Republican Gerrymanders, the Democrats abandon the commitments passed towards the more equitable cards than the groups of good governance.
Why we wrote this
The role of external money in the elections increased exponentially since the Supreme Court judged in 2010 that political spending is a form of discourse. Now, some defenders of the reform of the financing of the campaigns hope to impose limits through the States, Maine and Montana open the way.
For the candidates, to voluntarily reject the Super CAP and the dark silver groups which do not disclose their donors would be equivalent to a unilateral disarmament in a arms race. “The two parties have become dependent on this money,” said Robert Boatright, professor of politics at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, who studies the funding of the campaign.
External groups are technically not allowed to coordinate with the campaigns, but it turned out to be a distinction devoid of meaning, adds Professor Boatright. “THE [Supreme] Court theory was that independent expenses were entirely beyond the control of a candidate, but what we have seen in the past 15 years is that it is not necessary for people to spend this money to talk to candidates for what they are doing. It is obvious what would benefit the candidate, ”he says.
Strong support for political expenses
Citizens United was controversial from the start. During his speech on the state of the 2010 Union, a week after the Verdict announcement, President Barack Obama warned that he “would open the valves to special interests, including foreign companies, to spend without limit during our elections”. Judge of the Supreme Court Samuel Alito, who was in the public, was seen “not true” in response.
Recent surveys show that voters are concerned about the influence of money in politics and that the majorities of both parties support the limits of the quantity of people and businesses rich in campaigns.
Last November, Maine voters massively supported a voting initiative to limit Super CAP contributions to $ 5,000 per person. The limit only applies to the state elections. The defenders say that the $ 5,000 ceiling was chosen because it questioned; Voters have perceived a much higher risk of corruption when the donations were at this or more level. The law also requires the disclosure of all donors, regardless of the amount, to external groups.
One month after the adoption of the measure, Alex Titcomb joined a federal trial to block the law. Mr. Titcomb, who directs Dinner Table, a conservative basic organization in Maine, says that it is unconstitutional for state or federal regulators to cap donations to groups like his who are committed to political issues.
“The contributions of the campaign are a problem of freedom of expression,” he says. “People come together to influence their government, and this is the first amendment.”
In July, a federal judge of Maine agreed with Mr. Titcomb, judging that the law defended by the voters was unconstitutional and ordering a permanent injunction.
But the decision has not dissuaded Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor who helped draw up the Maine’s voting initiative. A longtime defender of the reform of the financing of the campaigns, he expected that the trial. He wants a call to be heard before the 1st Court of Appeals circuit and, ultimately, the United States Supreme Court. Its objective is to show that the federal courts have “made a mistake” in the interpretation of the United citizens to allow the Super CAP to collect unlimited funds around political campaigns.
Maine’s law limits contributions, and not spending, and does not question the right of societies to spend for political speech, notes Professor Lessig. What he disputes is the legal basis of Super Pac, entities that are supposed to be distinct from the countryside and, unlike them, can accept unlimited gifts, including groups of dark funds.
In Citizens United, the Supreme Court said that the government could not limit the political discourse of certain groups in order to level the rules of the game for all, an argument that the legislators had used to justify ceilings on donations. The only justification for the limits to companies and unions, tried the court was to prevent the counterpart of the counterpart or the appearance of such corruption.
Professor Lessig says that this last point is why states should have the right to limit donations to super heat pumps: they have become conduits for political corruption. When the New Jersey senator Robert Menendez, a democrat, was sentenced last year to have accepted bribes and to have hindered justice, the court learned that bribes had been paid by his management to a Super PAC. And while the Super PACs are supposed to be independent of the campaigns, the candidate of the time, Donald Trump, hit Elon Musk and his Super Pac to lead campaigns on the ground in the states of the battlefield 2024. Musk later received a position not in confusion in the Trump administration.
“No one stops [wealthy donors] To spend money on a question, ”explains Professor Lessig. What Maine tries to do, he says, is finally to ask the Supreme Court to “determine if the first amendment protects contributions to independent political action committees”.
He does not seek to reverse united citizens, but a related decision known as discoursen.org. In 2010, the DC Court of Appeal judged, quoting citizens, that independent groups could accept unlimited contributions to produce attacks of attack and other political communications as long as they did not work directly with the candidates. This decision turned on the fuse of the Explosion of Super CAP and other “independent expenditure” groups.
Mr. Titcomb recognizes that Maine’s voting measure was popular with voters. But he says that it was not because of the concerns about corruption, but because they “had enough [political] TV and SMS. They think that a ceiling would reduce the volume.
First Maine, the next Montana?
Maine is not the first state to try to target the flow of outside money resulting from Citizens United, says Professor Boatright. But in the absence of a makeover of the Supreme Court, which has more inclined to the right since 2010, he considers the laws of the campaign of state campaign similar to the abortion bans adopted by the states led by the GOP before the court reverses ROE v. Wade in 2022. States that adopted campaign funding restrictions, he said, will essentially have “made a declaration and wrote a marker for the future”.
The Montana is perhaps the next one: an initiative to vote proposed in 2026, if it was adopted, would modify the constitution of the State to end the power of companies and dark money groups to spend unlimited sums in politics. The neutral “Montana Plan” of neutral citizens by changing the law of societies, which is a state – not federal law -. Supporters say that it could be a plan for other states to regulate campaign financing. It would also apply to companies registered in other states.
“We have the story to direct it,” explains Jeff Mangan, a former legislator of the Democratic State and former commissioner of political practices, a unique state agency in Montana which oversees the campaign financing regulations.
In 1912, Montana was the pioneer of legal limits on companies’ money in politics in reaction to interference by the powerful state copper industry. Almost a century later, the Supreme Court of the State ruled that Montana was not bound by united citizens because of its history of restriction of business expenditure, a decision which was canceled in 2012 by the Supreme Court.
Mr. Mangan directs the transparent electoral initiative, which wrote the initiative of the Montana Plan and submitted it to regulators. The plan distinguishes the rights that companies must spend money around the elections, which the United Citizens have confirmed and the powers granted by the States to the companies. Denying companies The power to spend and the rights do not apply, he says. “It’s a different way of looking at the problem,” he says.
Even certain experts on the financing of the campaigns that oppose United citizens wondered if it would resist an examination of the higher courts. Critics call it a political blow supported by special interests which are too intelligent in half. “People scratch their heads and wonder how it will work,” said Brock Lowrance, a GOP agent from Montana who was the director of independent expenses of the Senate National Republican Committee in 2024.
Former senator Jon Test, a Democrat from Montana who lost his headquarters last year, is one of the supporters of the proposed voting measure. Former Governor Marc Racicot, the only republican publicly supporting him, broke out with his party to vote for Joe Biden in 2020.
Mr. Mangan says that what he understands of regular Montana voters is frustration about external money that flock to the state, including by groups that mask their donors. “We have to do something about politics, no matter who is in power,” he said.
