Last June, a bi-partisan group of senior politicians in Montana joined with the Transparent Election Initiative in announcing the “Montana Plan” – a groundbreaking idea designed to “sweep corporate and secret-donor money out of Montana’s local, state, and federal politics. It achieves this … by the state of Montana simply declining to grant corporations the power to spend in politics.”
Among those backing the idea are Marc Racicot, former Republican Governor of Montana and former Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Steve Bullock, former Democratic Governor of Montana. With a tweak to the strategy after a recent court decision, the effort is building a new head of steam in 2026. Let’s join them. Let’s run with the idea here in Connecticut.
As we all know, federal limits on campaign spending are essentially meaningless. Wealthy individuals and corporations can donate unlimited sums via the intentionally complex mess that is U.S. campaign finance. No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, this system is a train wreck for you, your family, and your community.
Most of the money spent on campaigns flows though some sort of corporation (mainly certain types of non-profits). Corporations are formed at the state level, not the federal level. Corporations have the powers that states give them —no more, no less. That is a fundamental principal of American corporate law, upheld by the Supreme Court for 150 years. States also have the right to determine what corporations formed in other states can, and cannot do, within their borders. Connecticut can control the power of corporations to spend money on politics inside state lines: a simple solution to an election contagion that is a primary reason why our democracy is foundering.
From 2004 to 2010, annual spending on presidential elections went from $280 million to $484 million. By 2024, the spending skyrocketed to $4.5 billion. In his dissenting opinion on the Citizens United court case, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the decision was “a rejection of the common sense of the American people. A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.”
Like the Founding Fathers, Stevens understood how corruption works.
In the 2024 election cycle, six individuals donors donated over $1 billion (in total) to federal elections. Elon Musk’s publicly disclosed election contributions totaled $291 million. Within hours of the inauguration last year, he was standing in the Oval Office, running the new the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative with wild abandon. He was also running companies that hold government contracts totaling 10’s of billions of dollars.
Then there is the problem of corporate donations. One example: the fossil fuel industry spent almost a quarter of a billion dollars on the 2024 presidential election. Again, within hours of the new administration’s start-up last year, the government began to shut down multi-billion dollar renewable energy projects, withdraw from long-standing international commitments to cut carbon pollution, and close down work within the government on climate change (including forcing agencies to remove the phrase “climate change” from government websites).
This happened even though investment in renewables energy has been widely embraced across the nation in both “red” and “blue” states for more than a decade. By undercutting clean energy companies at home, the administration was handing one of the fastest growing and largest business markets in the world to China.
Then, we have the fact that virtually every major medical and health organization on the planet has stated that climate change is a major threat to human health in the 21st century. The decision to undertake all these actions is staggering – perhaps the worst public policy decision in human history.
As is true of almost every change that has reshaped the United States over time, the push to rewrite campaign finance law is going to have to start within the states.
Connecticut can join with Montana and rewrite this story – leading a new narrative about (once again) shifting power back to the people, where it belongs. When more states follow, the experiment that is our American democracy will be rejuvenated. Let’s get moving forward again toward a more noble and just horizon.
Dan Quinlan lives in West Hartford.