When 83-year-old Sam Getsinger thinks about the future, she pictures her five grandchildren and the world she wants to leave them. An important part of that world, Getsinger said, is a healthy democracy. So when she first heard about an initiative to limit Michigan utilities’ influence in political campaigns, she immediately volunteered to support it.
“I don’t want our politics to continue so that the person with the most money wins everything,” Getsinger said. “I don’t think that’s a very sound democracy.”
Getsinger spent months knocking on doors throughout northern Michigan. She said nearly all the people behind those doors agreed with her that utilities shouldn’t wield as much political influence as they do.
Keeping corporate money out of elections is notoriously difficult in the United States, but voters across Michigan are preparing to decide whether they should try it anyway, with a particular focus on the state’s electricity and gas utilities. Saying they are sick of persistent power outages and soaring utility bills, advocacy groups and grassroots volunteers are pushing for a high-stakes ballot measure they say will roll back utilities’ influence over state elections, ultimately freeing lawmakers to hold them accountable. Polls from supportive organizations show strong voter approval of the initiative, but even if it passes, and even if it successfully navigates inevitable legal challenges, some experts caution that it still will not eliminate all utility money from politics entirely.
The upcoming ballot proposal comes as customer dissatisfaction with Michigan utilities mounts significantly. The state currently contends with some of the highest utility rates in the country alongside some of the least reliable service nationwide. Rounds of extreme weather events, including severe ice storms and destructive tornadoes over the last few years, have left hundreds of thousands of residents without power for extended periods of time. Furthermore, local residents are increasingly expressing frustration at the expanding footprint of massive data centers in the state and the heavily regulated utilities required to power them.
“Everything is more expensive. The quality of service is worse, and we are dealing with more air and water pollution as a result of utility influence in Lansing,” said Christy McGillivray, co-chair of Michiganders for Money Out of Politics, a coalition of local advocacy groups that successfully collected 560,000 signatures to place the proposal directly on the ballot. “So we have to put a stop to it.”
The measure is specifically designed to plug up persistent leaks in Michigan’s existing laws restricting corporate influence over politics. While the state already prohibits corporations, including investor-owned utilities, from contributing directly to political campaigns, corporate dollars have historically found plenty of alternative avenues into elections. The classic example involves companies establishing and funding nonprofit organizations known as political action committees, or PACs, which subsequently contribute to political campaigns or launch independent advocacy advertisements.
Last year, Michigan lawmakers and legislative committees on both sides of the aisle accepted $421,000 in corporate utility donations, according to data compiled by the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. In the 2022 election cycle alone, those donations totaled more than $1.6 million across various state and local races.
Proposal 2 would effectively end some of that spending by prohibiting utility-funded PACs from giving directly to political campaigns. However, it would go a significant step further by prohibiting utility executives, board members, and even the immediate family members of those individuals from making political contributions to campaigns or political parties. The exact same restrictions would apply to other private companies that provide goods or services to state or local governments under contracts larger than $250,000.
Additionally, the measure would tighten loose provisions within Michigan’s broader campaign finance laws, making the funding sources of certain political advertisements much more transparent while adding formal legal definitions for online political advertisements.
For Getsinger and many of the voters she spoke with during her months of canvassing, climate action served as an important motive in wanting to curb the political power of utilities. Michigan has established ambitious climate goals that legally require utilities to source 100 percent of their energy from clean and renewable generation facilities by 2040, yet major utilities in the state have frequently been viewed as impeding meaningful climate and environmental progress.
Michigan utilities have lobbied aggressively against community solar initiatives, arguing publicly that such programs would inadvertently increase electricity rates for everyday consumers. Similarly, proposed legislation that would force utilities to pay for the cleanup of toxic, contaminated sites has stalled repeatedly at the state house due to intense industry pushback. Previous legislative attempts to introduce bills aimed at curbing utilities’ influence in the state capitol have likewise failed to gain traction.
However, political dynamics appear to be shifting as Michigan lawmakers become increasingly aware of the deep unpopularity of utility influence in politics. When the Michigan League of Conservation Voters launched its "No Utility Money Challenge" in 2025—urging lawmakers to sign public pledges promising they would not accept campaign donations from utilities or associated political groups—fewer than 10 candidates initially signed on. Today, that number has jumped dramatically to 126 candidates running for state office, spanning both the Democratic and Republican parties.
“These pledges are reflective of how toxic utility money has become, and that’s new,” said Karlee Weinmann, a research and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute, a national think tank that focuses on utility regulation and corporate behavior. “It used to not even be controversial in the state capitol to be connected with the utilities as a lawmaker.”
Naturally, critics, utilities, and aligned interest groups argue that Prop 2 infringes upon constitutionally protected freedom of speech while failing to address the outsize and largely unaccountable influence of wealthy out-of-state political groups.
John Sellek, a spokesperson for the organized opposition group Protect MI Free Speech, asserted that supporters are cynically capitalizing on voters’ widespread frustration with the high cost of living to carry out a much wider, stealthy attack on everyday citizens who might be barred from supporting candidates simply because of who they are related to or what business contracts they hold.
The opposition group was formally established after Prop 2 was first introduced in 2025. According to campaign finance disclosures tracked by the Michigan Transparency Network, Protect MI Free Speech has received $232,000 from utility interest groups out of a total of approximately $851,000 raised from all combined sources. In stark contrast, Michiganders for Money Out of Politics—also operating under the banner of Mop Up Michigan—has raised more than $8.7 million in total contributions from individual donors and voter interest groups.
Consumers Energy, one of the state’s largest publicly regulated utilities, maintained that it strictly adheres to all state and federal campaign finance laws while reporting its political donations transparently.
“Mop Up Michigan’s approach won’t eliminate money in politics—it will simply shift influence away from Michigan companies and toward wealthy national donors and special interests,” said Katie Carey, a spokesperson for the utility company.
While 21 states currently maintain laws making it illegal for corporations to donate directly to political campaigns, very few have ever attempted to expand those restrictions as broadly as Prop 2 proposes, and none have done so by specifically and uniquely targeting utility companies. The coalition that helped draft the ballot question explained that the explicit goal was to rein in some of the most prolific spenders in state politics.
“Nothing happens in our state legislature if regulated gas and electric utilities don’t greenlight it,” said McGillivray.
Legislative and legal battles surrounding corporate money are playing out in other states as well. Lawmakers in Hawaiʻi passed a sweeping law earlier in 2026 designed to prevent virtually all forms of political spending by organized entities, whether structured as traditional corporations or non-profit advocacy groups, though that law has already faced multiple legal challenges in federal court. Meanwhile, voters in Montana are considering a similarly ambitious campaign finance reform measure on their November ballot. Other states, including Colorado, Connecticut, and Maine, have instituted explicit limits restricting the ability of utilities to fund political lobbying efforts using money collected directly from ratepayers.
If Michigan voters ultimately approve the measure, the state will almost certainly test the outer legal limits of what state governments can constitutionally do to curtail the influence of corporate money in modern politics. Although residents of numerous states frequently express a desire for strict regulations similar to those outlined in Prop 2, such comprehensive measures have largely failed to materialize due to strict precedents established by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Over five decades of landmark judicial decisions, culminating in the pivotal 2010 Citizens United v. FEC ruling, federal courts have consistently affirmed that political spending constitutes a protected form of free speech under the First Amendment, and that corporations possess speech rights functionally comparable to those of individual human beings. Consequently, federal and state governments retain very limited legal mechanisms to control independent corporate spending on elections.
Legal precedents dictate that governments retain the authority to ban direct corporate financial contributions to political candidates because doing so actively helps prevent actual corruption, the appearance of corruption, and the circumvention of established contribution limits. Furthermore, state and federal lawmakers can legally cap the specific amounts that any single entity—including corporate-aligned nonprofits—donates directly to political campaigns. However, the courts have ruled that lawmakers cannot prevent corporations from funding independent political action committees that subsequently support candidates, nor can governments place virtually any restrictions whatsoever on independent political expenditures, such as advertising campaigns that advocate for or against a candidate without coordinating directly with the campaign itself. Corporations are permitted to contribute unlimited sums of money to aligned nonprofit organizations that execute these independent advertising blitzes.
Given these deeply entrenched judicial rulings, numerous legal and policy experts believe that enacting truly meaningful restrictions on corporate or wealthy individual political spending would require nothing short of a formal constitutional amendment.
Anticipating these hurdles, opposition groups have already vowed to file lawsuits challenging Michigan’s ballot initiative immediately should it win at the ballot box. Legal experts point to the proposed restrictions on PAC spending and the political contributions of executive family members as being particularly vulnerable to aggressive legal attack.
Even if the measure successfully survives those courtroom challenges, experts note that it still would not address the vast majority of corporate spending directed toward politics, including traditional lobbying activities and substantial expenditures on uncoordinated political advertisements.
“If one avenue is closed off to them, they can redirect that money to other entities that can effectuate pretty much the same goal,” explained Karley Abramson, a research associate at the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a nonpartisan research organization.
Advocates for the initiative, such as the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, readily acknowledge the inherent legal and structural limits on what the ballot measure can accomplish. Proponents argue that the limitation is beside the point, asserting that even if the measure cannot completely satisfy the system-wide frustration currently felt by voters, it represents a crucial and tangible step in the right direction. Above all, supporters emphasize that passing the proposal will send an unmistakable message to politicians regarding how serious their constituents are about demanding true accountability from utilities.
“This is a really solid first step in starting to kind of push forward some more transparency,” said Nick Dodge, senior director of programs for the Michigan League of Conservation Voters.