Voters Lead a Backlash Against the Oligarchy

After the most expensive election in American history, featuring an incredible $2 billion spent by just 20 high-net-worth donors, voters signaled their intention to get corporate and dark money out of politics in several major ballot initiatives, and to stop the pillaging of their communities by those same special interests.

It wasn’t a total victory—billionaires in California protected their wealth from taxation by defeating Proposition 40. But for the most part, voters looked into the face of the oligarchy and shouted, “No!”

One of the most consequential examples was in Montana. Of the 454,000 votes cast in response to Initiative 194, otherwise known as the Montana Plan, more than 65 percent supported banning corporations, nonprofits, and other “artificial persons” from contributing to campaigns and funding political action committees in the state.

The Montana Plan is unmistakably clear: “Any violation of I-194 is punished by forfeiting all privileges to do business in Montana.” Corporations derive their power from the states in which they are chartered, meaning any state can leverage their existing authority to rein in unchecked corporate political influence. Montana is now the second state after Hawaii to effectively sidestep the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, which opened the floodgates of dark money into our elections by equating independent expenditures with free speech.

“It was a big moment because it really is the purest example of citizens standing up and saying, ‘This is what we want,’” said Tom Moore, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP).

Moore is the architect of CAP’s “Corporate Power Reset,” a legal framework for states to end the scourge of corporate and dark money in politics without having to amend the Constitution, or overturn Citizens United. Organizers in Montana, led by the Transparent Election Initiative (TEI), collected 50,000 signatures to get I-194 on the ballot this year. As the Prospect reported, Jeff Mangan, who previously served as Montana’s 12th commissioner of political practices, founded TEI after reading about Moore’s plan to circumvent Citizens United. What followed was “two years’ worth of work” engaging Montanans on the ground about the issue, Mangan observed in an interview.

“This is good for the state,” he said. “This is good for the nation.”

As the results trickled in Tuesday night, Mangan was watching at a small brewhouse in Helena, the state capital.

“We invited folks from the community, and it was a pretty packed house,” Mangan told the Prospect. “We just continued to refresh the screen and watch for several hours.”

It was over before midnight.

“I was overjoyed for our volunteers and the folks that spent so much time giving their time and effort and energy to something that they believed in,” said Mangan. “The same volunteers, particularly the community leads, that helped gather signatures stayed with us into the campaign phase after it was certified for the ballot … they stuck with us through that entire process.”

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Although Hawaii enacted its own law to clean up the state’s elections in May, that law, which is known as Act 11, does not take effect until July 1, 2027. Legislators in Hawaii say this will give them more time to “get it right” amid pushback from powerful political nonprofits in the state. Meanwhile, Act 11’s opponents have already brought two lawsuits in a bid to block the law.

“I’d be shocked if we don’t have [a lawsuit] in Montana,” Moore told the Prospect.

In addition to bracing for potential legal challenges, and ensuring Montana legislators understand how the Montana Plan works, TEI has been working with organizers in Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, and New Jersey to help them bring this framework to their states.

“That work continues,” Mangan said. He also pointed to other states that are “showing interest each and every day.”

For his part, Moore expects 30 or more states to introduce bills targeting corporate political spending power after their legislative sessions kick off in the spring of next year. By that time, Moore said there will be “this great example of Hawaii and Montana—a blue state and red state—moving forward with this, and I think it’s really going to help the sponsors in those states move those bills.”

Among them is New York. Last year, former assemblymember Micah Lasher, who is now the Democratic representative-elect for New York’s 12th Congressional District, introduced the first bill in the country aimed at curbing corporate political spending in state politics. Lasher’s own race for Congress got caught up in a massive spending fight from the artificial intelligence industry, whose two biggest companies chose sides between him and assemblymember Alex Bores.

“I’m optimistic that a great colleague will pick the bill up,” Lasher said in an interview. “I will certainly do everything I can from my bully pulpit as a congressman to encourage the legislature to pass it.”

He continued: “We have to use every tool we’ve got to end this arms race around money in politics.”

It appears that colleague might be Democratic assemblymember-elect Adam Bojak. In a post on X praising the passage of I-194, Bojak said he “can’t wait to bring this legislation to New York in next year’s session.”

ELSEWHERE ON TUESDAY, Michiganders overwhelmingly supported Proposal 2, which would limit campaign contributions from regulated utilities, including investor-owned utilities like DTE and Consumers Energy, as well as certain government contractors.

That measure, which passed with 81 percent of the vote, was one of the first on Michigan’s ballot to be called. It was backed by Michiganders for Money Out of Politics, otherwise known as Mop Up Michigan. The progressive statewide coalition believes the now-greenlit proposal will prevent regulated utilities from engaging in “pay-to-play” politics through contributions to candidates for state office.

Proposal 2, which also expands disclosure requirements for political advertising, extends to government contractors, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield and even Flock Safety. Immediately after the results came in Tuesday night, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a libertarian think tank based in Michigan, filed a lawsuit challenging Proposition 2 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan.

The complaint, which names as defendants Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson—the state’s governor-elect—follows a familiar trope, with counsel for the Mackinac Center arguing that Proposition 2 violates the First Amendment. That could fall under the Citizens United precedent, but the Montana measure provides an alternative path.

Meanwhile, another trend on Tuesday shows the limits of big money to purchase their desires. Voters nationwide said no to more data centers and artificial intelligence by a wide margin, including in states where the tech industry spent hundreds of millions to buy seats for supportive GOP candidates and approval for ballot measures.

In Ohio, where Big Tech spent $55 million in a failed attempt to defeat Sherrod Brown, voters said no to unchecked data center construction or expansion 21 times. They considered 15 ballot measures to set limits on data center construction, including banning them outright, and passed them all. They considered six measures to allow data centers, and defeated them all.

A similar story played out in nine other states. Altogether, a total of 46 data center measures were offered across the country. In the vast majority of elections, voters set new limits and refused to grant new permissions.

In Maine, voters passed at least six of eight measures to limit data centers. Kansas voters approved all four measures to limit data centers. Illinois voters did the same seven times. But they approved the state’s eighth Big Tech measure, an advisory vote to allow the city of Chicago to bring back gunshot detection technology. Formerly known as ShotSpotter and now rebranded as SoundThinking, that artificial intelligence surveillance has a high rate of failure and contributes to racist policing.

Overall, voters illustrated that backlash against data centers and artificial intelligence “is easily the bipartisan issue of our lifetime,” said Shaunna Thomas, executive director of Guardrails Alliance, a new PAC launched earlier this year to counterbalance the extreme amounts of money tech oligarchs were pouring into primary and midterm races.

“Americans everywhere, regardless of their political orientation, are absolutely sick and tired of AI companies trying to control every aspect of our lives,” Thomas said. “What we’re going to see now is resistance to the AI oligarchy growing even more.”

She expected tech industry executives to attempt to reinvent themselves as Democrats and manipulate politicians behind the scenes, as OpenAI’s top lobbyist has been doing lately ahead of the 2028 general election. Chris Lehane, the company’s chief global affairs officer, is telling Democrats that they’ll be on the wrong side of history if they don’t support artificial intelligence, Politico reported. Another group, the Chamber of Progress, massaged statistics to argue that AI was a “low salience issue,” which is hard to square with the historic wipeout when the questions were put to voters directly.

“They’re going to rebrand data centers, they’re going to pretend to be Democrats, they’re going to threaten to move a lot of money, in public ways and in darker ways,” Thomas said. But they are even less popular than Immigration and Customs Enforcement, she noted, and their money is toxic. If Democrats want to keep the support they’re enjoying from voters after Tuesday’s blue deluge, they must take that to heart and prove that they’re curtailing Big Tech with policy, not just talking about it.

“At the federal level, of course there is Trump standing in the way with his veto power,” she said, but Democrats should force him to act. “Get caught trying.” And, she noted, people do not generally think that political leaders will actually do much about Big Tech. Her advice? “So show them.”