Fight 05 · Pillar one
Citizens United turned our elections into an auction for the donor class.
Outside groups spent about $4.5 billion in the 2024 federal elections. I can’t overturn Citizens United from one House seat. I can refuse the money, run my campaign in the open, and push the state fixes other states already use.
The honest situation
The big court fix isn’t coming. The state and personal ones are.
Two 2010 Supreme Court rulings - Citizens United and SpeechNow - built the machine that gave us Super PACs and unlimited outside spending. Outside groups spent about $4.5 billion in 2024, more than half of it from groups that don’t fully say who their donors are.1 That’s not the system breaking. It’s the system doing exactly what the Court said it could.
Undoing Citizens United takes a constitutional amendment - two-thirds of Congress plus three-quarters of the states. The people who’d have to vote for it are mostly funded by the very system it would end. It won’t pass in my term, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
What can happen now: refuse the money myself, push the state fixes, hold the party to a standard, and actually wage the long amendment fight instead of just gesturing at it. All four are real. All four can start today.
My pledge
Refuse the money the system runs on.
One of six planks in my pledge.
No corporate PAC money. On the record before I even filed.
No Super PAC support - not asked for, not accepted. If one forms anyway, I disavow it publicly and won’t coordinate.
No dark money. If a secret-donor group spends on my race, I call them out by name.
A public spending ledger on this site, broken out by category so you can see where the money goes. Updated weekly, not every three months.
Small donors first. Success looks like an average donation under $100. I take money only from people, never PACs.
What I’ll do in Washington
Cosponsor the bills. Vote for the amendments. Be honest about the odds.
This is the fight where over-promising has done the most damage. Democrats have promised to overturn Citizens United for fifteen years without the votes to do it. People can tell a promise from a plan. Here’s the plan.
- Cosponsor the DISCLOSE Act, which forces dark-money groups to name their donors. It’s passed the House before and died at the Senate filibuster.
- Cosponsor every campaign-finance fix that moves, 60 votes or not. The record matters.
- Push for federal small-donor matching - a six-to-one match on small donations. It’s the strongest reform that doesn’t need a constitutional amendment.
- Cosponsor the amendment to overturn Citizens United - while telling the truth that an amendment takes a generation. Voting for it is right. Promising it’s about to pass is a lie.
- Push to make public companies disclose their political spending to shareholders. That doesn’t need an amendment - it needs a regulator willing to act and Congress to stop quietly blocking the rule, which it’s done for over a decade.
What I’ll do here at home
Other states already do the workarounds. Tennessee doesn’t.
These fixes don’t need Citizens United overturned - they work inside the rules we have now. Tennessee uses none of them.
- A democracy voucher pilot, like Seattle’s: every voter gets small-dollar vouchers to give to local candidates, who take them in exchange for lower limits and spending caps. Seattle’s version grew small-donor participation a lot and survived a court challenge. Memphis or any of the 16 counties could be first.
- Small-donor matching for local races, like New York City’s eight-to-one match. It levels the field between candidates with small donors and candidates with big ones - and works for a Memphis race or a county commission seat alike.
- Faster disclosure of outside spending. States like California and Washington require outside groups to report within a day or two. Tennessee’s rules are looser. The state could match the stronger ones without waiting on Washington - and that covers every race in all 17 counties.
- Shareholder approval for corporate political spending. Make company boards get shareholder sign-off before spending company money on politics. Most boards won’t ask - which is the point.
- A foreign-influenced corporation ban. Minnesota passed one in 2023; a federal court blocked key parts in 2025. That doesn’t kill the idea - it means the next version gets written with the ruling in mind. The opening is real and worth testing.
What I’ll push my own party to do
If the party won’t refuse the money, it isn’t serious.
The Tennessee Democratic Party can make refusing corporate PAC money, Super PAC support, and dark money a condition of its endorsement. Costs the party almost nothing, and it changes what every endorsed candidate can credibly say. A party that wants Citizens United gone but takes money from the system it built has already lost the argument. You win it by deciding what you will and won’t take.
The pushback I’m ready for
“You can’t win if you turn down Super PAC and corporate PAC money.”
Consultants say this to candidates every cycle, and in a narrow way it’s true: if I refuse that money, I can’t match an opponent who takes it. The question is whether that matters more than what you’d give up.
I may not be able to outspend my opponents. I’m not going to try. If the only way to win is to take the money that owns Congress, then winning means becoming the thing I’m running against. I’d rather lose honest than win bought.
And the real audience isn’t just today’s voters - it’s the next ten Tennessee Democrats deciding whether to run this way. If small-donor-first, no dark money, open books can make a real race in a rigged district, the model spreads. If a Super PAC buries it, the consultants win the argument for another decade. Proving it can work is the whole point.
This is the work. Help me do it.
A campaign that refuses corporate PAC money, Super PACs, and dark money runs on small donors. If this fight is one you want won, chip in what you can.