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How the Montana Plan Could Make Citizens United Irrelevant

How the Montana Plan Could Make “Citizens United” Irrelevant

A transpartisan initiative to return power to the people.

Montana, like so many rural states, was less than a generation ago a place where political candidates had to meet voters and talk with them to win an election. In the 16 years since the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the gates to allow corporate money to flood and overwhelm the political system, much of that personal engagement has evaporated.

Voters’ mailboxes bulge with election ads from groups with unfamiliar names; television and radio are overwhelmed with paid political spots and attack pieces. But the candidates themselves—and their positions on issues—can be much harder to locate. In a place where politicians once made getting to know their voters across vast distances a sport, statewide elected officials often spurn town halls and skip public events in favor of private fundraisers. The result is a distanced, disenchanted electorate, frustrated that its concerns go unheard, and a slate of electeds who seem to primarily serve their donors.

For citizens like Todd Frank, owner of an outdoor sports business in Missoula, it’s time for something to give. Frank grew up in Montana, and like most school kids here learned from an early age about the history of toxic political corruption and money that shaped the state’s earliest, dark days. In the current environment, he said, it feels like the system is repeating its worst mistakes from a century ago.

“I don’t think our elected officials do a good job of listening to their constituents, because they are listening to the people who give them millions and millions and millions of dollars. We could do so much better,” said Frank. “The frustration among the average voter is about the amount of money in politics.”

Frank is one of many Montanans speaking out in favor of a new initiative that could upend the power of money in politics, an all-volunteer effort to make Citizens United irrelevant, that is drawing attention and endorsements from high-profile figures and sparking similar efforts across the country. The Montana Transparent Election Initiative would prohibit any incorporated entity that operates within the state from spending to influence state, federal, or local elections. It doesn’t attack Citizens United head-on but rather makes it meaningless, organizers say. The prohibition would apply to all corporations, for-profit and nonprofit, as well as unions, a seemingly simple workaround to what many see as the primary rot in American politics.

Jeff Mangan, Montana’s former commissioner of political practices, said the election initiative and the larger slate of ideas known as the Montana Plan are rooted in history and essential for returning power to the people. Mangan developed the initiative and larger plan with a constitutional law scholar and has become the key organizer shepherding it onto the ballot with support that crosses party lines. It’s been a journey involving extended court battles and quiet but powerful opposition from groups who wield power through........

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