Montana's Hundred-Year Fight

Back in 1899, when state legislators still elected U.S. senators, a copper baron named William Clark bribed enough of them to win a seat.

In response, Montana voters banned corporate money from state elections by ballot initiative. That ban held for a hundred years. Then came Citizens United, and in 2012 the Supreme Court struck down most of it.

Here's an oddity of American law: corporations are creations of the states. A company exists because a state grants it a charter, and that charter defines what it can do.

This November, Montanans vote on the Montana Plan — a measure that doesn't restrict spending. It rewrites the charter, so political spending is not a power the state granted. It's backed by a former Democratic senator and a former Republican governor. Business groups oppose it, noting nonprofits and trade associations would be covered too.

If it passes, and if it survives the Supreme Court, other states are ready to follow.

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William A. Clark and the 1899 Senate seat. Until the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified in 1913, U.S. senators were chosen by state legislatures rather than voters — so buying a seat meant buying roughly fifty individual votes, not an electorate. Clark, one of Montana's "Copper Kings," was elected by the Montana legislature in 1899. Evidence before the Senate investigating committee described Clark's agents paying off mortgages, clearing debts, purchasing ranches, financing banks, and handing legislators envelopes of cash. After ninety-six witnesses testified, the committee concluded Clark was "not entitled" to his seat; he resigned in 1900 before the Senate acted. He was later elected legitimately and served 1901-1907. Sources vary widely on the amount — Clark himself admitted to "hundreds of thousands of dollars," other accounts cite $272,000 or $431,000 for 47 votes — which is why the script names no figure. Mark Twain on Clark: "He is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag." (Center for Public Integrity; Governing)

The Corrupt Practices Act, 1912. Montana voters approved the Act by citizen initiative in November 1912, prohibiting corporate contributions to and independent expenditures on candidate elections. It is codified at Mont. Code Ann. § 13-35-227, and the legislature's findings at § 13-35-502 recite the history directly: "since 1912, through passage of the Corrupt Practices Act by initiative, Montana has prohibited corporate contributions to and expenditures on candidate elections." Notably, the law did not address union spending. Montana also passed I-125 in 1996 barring corporate money in ballot-issue campaigns; that provision was struck down in Montana Chamber of Commerce v. Argenbright (9th Cir. 2000). (Montana Code Annotated § 13-35-502)

A historical dispute worth knowing. The script says Montana banned corporate money "in response" to Clark's bribery, which is the conventional account and the one the Montana Supreme Court itself relied on in 2011. But University of Montana historian Jeff Wiltse has argued the story is more complicated: "The copper kings — Marcus Daly, William A. Clark, and F. Augustus Heinze — did indeed corrupt Montana politics, but that occurred… many years before the law was enacted in 1912." On Wiltse's reading, the 1912 Act targeted Amalgamated Copper — a corporate trust formed in 1899 by Daly, Henry Rogers, and William Rockefeller — rather than the individual copper barons. Both sides of the I-194 fight invoke the Copper Kings; proponents note that Wiltse's reading actually strengthens their case, since it makes the original target corporate rather than individual. The thirteen-year gap between Clark's bribery and the Act is real, and "in response" compresses it. (Wiltse, Montana Law Review vol. 73; Daily Montanan)

"Struck down most of it" — the precision matters. In December 2011, the Montana Supreme Court upheld the 1912 Act in Western Tradition Partnership v. Attorney General, 2011 MT 328, finding that "examples of well-financed corruption involving corporate money abound in Montana" and that unlimited corporate spending would leave "the average citizen candidate in Montana… unable to compete." Montana's argument was that its documented history satisfied the state-interest test Citizens United had left open. In June 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court summarily reversed in American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock — per curiam, 5-4, without oral argument — holding that Montana's arguments "either were already rejected in Citizens United, or fail to meaningfully distinguish that case." Justice Breyer dissented.

The reversal invalidated the ban as applied to independent expenditures. It did not eliminate bans on direct corporate contributions to candidates, which remain constitutional under FEC v. Beaumont (2003) and are still in force in Montana and roughly 21 other states. The script says "most of it" rather than "it" for this reason.

Montana was not an outlier in 1912. The federal Tillman Act banned corporate contributions to federal candidates in 1907, signed by Theodore Roosevelt; Massachusetts adopted a similar ban the same year; states had been restricting corporate election money since the late nineteenth century. What distinguished Montana was that voters enacted it themselves by initiative, and that the state's corruption record was unusually well documented — which is precisely the argument Montana made and lost in 2012.

I-194, "The Montana Plan" (2026). Certified for the November 2026 ballot on August 19, 2026, after the Transparent Election Initiative submitted roughly 50,000 signatures against a 30,121 requirement. A parallel constitutional amendment (BI-9) was found legally insufficient by the Attorney General for violating the single-subject rule; TEI proceeded with the statutory version.

The mechanism: rather than restricting political spending — which Citizens United forecloses — I-194 limits the powers Montana grants to "artificial persons," excluding from those powers any contribution of value to candidate elections, political parties, or state and local ballot issues. The initiative's findings state the theory plainly: corporations "are creations of statute that exist only by virtue of powers affirmatively extended by the state," and charter privileges "are not natural rights; they are conditional grants of legal status made by the state of Montana and accepted subject to the state's reserved authority to define, limit, revise, or" revoke them. The legal foundation is the reservation clause — the post-Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) provisions by which states reserved the power to amend corporate charters after granting them.

On out-of-state corporations. The measure anticipates the obvious objection. "Artificial persons" are defined as entities whose "existence, legal status, or limited liability shield is conferred by the laws of the state of Montana, including entities headquartered outside of the state that are authorized to transact in Montana or own property in the state." An entity organized elsewhere that "directly or indirectly undertakes, finances, or directs" political spending in Montana is conclusively treated as transacting business there. The theory is not that Montana rewrites a Delaware charter, but that a Delaware corporation operating in Montana receives its Montana limited-liability shield from Montana law, and Montana may decline to extend political spending as one of those privileges.

The penalty. Violation forfeits all charter privileges — limited liability, perpetual duration, succession in entity name, and statutory limits on personal liability. Privileges may be restored, but not automatically: the entity must disgorge everything spent, certify future compliance, and satisfy any further conditions the legislature prescribes. The measure exempts news, commentary, and editorial content, and does not apply to the state, political subdivisions, or individuals. PACs may still operate.

Backers. The campaign is led by Jeff Mangan, former Montana Commissioner of Political Practices (appointed by a Democratic governor) and founder of the Transparent Election Initiative. Supporters include Jon Tester (D), former U.S. senator; Marc Racicot (R), former governor (1993-2001) and chairman of the Republican National Committee (2002-2003); and Gary Buchanan, an independent. Pete Buttigieg rallied for the measure in Butte in May 2026. National polling supports the underlying premise: a YouGov survey found 79% of respondents — including 74% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats — agreed that large independent expenditures by wealthy donors and corporations give rise to corruption or its appearance.

The opposition, stated fairly. Three distinct objections:

Scope. The Montana Chamber of Commerce argues I-194 "would prohibit Montana businesses and nonprofits from participating in the political process," noting that family-owned farms, ranches, restaurants, and retail stores could not respond publicly to a ballot initiative targeting them, and that a small-business coalition could not push back on claims affecting its employees. The measure reaches nonprofits, trusts, partnerships, trade associations, and unincorporated associations — not only for-profit corporations. This is a substantive objection, not a rhetorical one.

Severity. The Attorney General's office allowed I-194 to proceed but attached a warning of "significant material harm" to businesses. Deputy Solicitor General Brent Mead wrote that because the measure applies to "anything of value," inadvertent reporting errors "now become a trap whereby an unwary business, non-profit, or association risks the severe sanction of having their charter immediately revoked."

Underinclusiveness. Opponents note that I-194 does not touch individual spending: "Out-of-state billionaires retain unlimited free speech rights under this initiative. In the 2024 election cycle alone, 300 billionaires spent more than $3 billion influencing elections across the country. None of that is touched by I-194." This is worth flagging internally, because it sits in tension with CM-85 ("The One Percent Is the Wrong Number"), which argues that individual ultra-wealthy spenders — not corporations — are the central problem. The two scripts point at different targets, and a listener who hears both should be able to notice that.

Precedent from 2012. Montana voters passed I-166 that year, establishing a state policy that corporations are not entitled to constitutional rights and directing officials to implement it, by roughly 75-25. It was subsequently overturned in state court. That history bears on how a court might treat I-194.

Related Civic Minute segments: What Citizens United Actually Did (CM-86), What Is Dark Money? (CM-87), Who Can Afford to Run? (CM-53), The One Percent Is the Wrong Number (CM-85). Planned companions: Michigan's Fix, Where the Money Comes From, What Would Clean Elections Look Like?, The Free Speech Problem.