Pete Buttigieg is set to rally in Butte on May 17 with supporters of a proposed Montana ballot initiative that would ban corporate money in state politics. The former presidential candidate’s appearance is part of a push for I-194, which backers say would keep corporations from contributing anything of value to candidates, political parties or state and local ballot issues.
Transparent Election Initiative organizers reached out after Buttigieg mentioned the Montana plan during a podcast interview, according to lead organizer Jeff Mangan. Mangan, a former Montana commissioner of political practices, said the campaign is collecting signatures fast enough that Buttigieg’s support could give it a lift as the clock runs toward a June 19 deadline.
Mangan said the group had gathered about 17,000 signatures since late March, but likely will need to collect about 40,000 to produce more than 30,000 qualifying signatures from registered Montana voters. The time and place for the Butte event were still being worked out.
The initiative is being pitched as a reset to Montana’s past limits on corporate spending in campaigns, a fight that has intensified since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling. Spending by candidate committees and third parties in the state’s 2024 U.S. Senate race totaled a record $300 million, a figure backers cite as proof that the current system has gone too far.
The proposal would also bar spending by artificial persons, including nonprofits, trusts, partnerships, corporations, trade associations and unincorporated associations. The penalty for violating the ban would be refusal of a license to do business in Montana, a sharp enforcement tool that sets the measure apart from a typical campaign finance crackdown.
Butte is only one stop in a broader effort that has already featured former Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and former governor Marc Racicot at promotional events. Similar initiatives have also been launched in Pennsylvania and Hawaii, but Montana’s version is the one Buttigieg has publicly embraced. He said corporate and dark money have drowned out voters and argued that changing the law could make elected leaders more accountable to the public and help open the way for action on housing and health care.
Buttigieg, a two-term mayor who won Iowa’s Democratic presidential caucus in 2020 and placed second in New Hampshire, has become an unusually visible surrogate for a state ballot drive far from his own home in Michigan, where he lives with his husband, Chasten, and their two children. For organizers, that is the point: if a national figure is willing to put his name on the fight, the final stretch to June 19 becomes less about explaining the idea and more about whether they can turn attention into signatures.