HELENA — This week, the U.S. Supreme Court made a ruling that could once again reshape the campaign finance landscape in national elections.
Justices sided with Republican campaign committees in a decision that allows political parties to spend unlimited amounts while coordinating directly with candidates. It’s the latest in a series of rulings in recent years, in which the court’s conservative majority has struck down campaign finance laws that they determined were too restrictive on political speech.
(Watch the video to hear how Montana political leaders are reacting.)
In the wake of the 2010 Citizens United decision, there are no limits on independent campaign expenditures – when an organization buys an advertisement for or against a candidate but doesn’t have any direct involvement with that candidate. However, there were still federal caps on how much party committees could spend in conjunction with their candidates.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee and two GOP lawmakers – including then-U.S. Sen. and now Vice President JD Vance – sued, arguing those caps violated the First Amendment right of free speech.
Montana U.S. Sen. Steve Daines was the chair of the NRSC while the lawsuit was making its way through the court system.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for free speech, the rule of law, and free and fair elections,” Daines said in a statement Tuesday. “The law will no longer restrict candidates or political parties from reaching voters and will restore coherence and balance to our election system.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the court’s majority opinion, joined by the other five conservative justices. In it, he said the caps were a “severe and direct restriction on free speech” that could only be justified if they were necessary to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption. He said cooperation between a political party and the candidates running with its label isn’t corruption, but a justifiable part of the political system.
Kavanaugh also said the caps had weakened the power of parties by encouraging political donors to spend through super PACs and other groups that are allowed unlimited expenditures.
“To uphold the political-party coordinated-expenditure limits here could therefore help consign political parties to continued second-tier status as compared to outside groups,” he wrote. “Weakened political parties distort the political system. And in the views of many, the relatively diminished political parties have ushered in increased political polarization and fragmentation.”
After the court’s decision, the NRSC released a memo, announcing how it planned to make use of the new rules in the 2026 elections. It said the committee would now be able to work directly with Republican Senate candidates on strategy, messaging and timing of campaign ads. In addition, outside groups pay a higher rate for advertising than candidates themselves do. The NRSC said, by spending in conjunction with candidates, they can secure more ads for the same amount of money than before.
The NRSC memo also argued the court’s ruling would help Republicans more than Democrats. That’s because in many recent elections – like Montana’s 2020 U.S. Senate race between Daines and then Gov. Steve Bullock and the 2024 Senate race between Sen. Jon Tester and Tim Sheehy – individual Democratic candidates have outraised Republicans, but the Republican party committees have raised more money than their Democratic counterparts.
The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices dissented from the decision. In an opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan, they warned that the caps helped protect against large donors circumventing contribution limits by giving money to a party with the understanding that it will help a specific candidate.
“The issue arises when—and only when—the party functions as a funnel through which individuals and non-party groups can finance candidates, because then the party-mediated payments may give rise to the same corruption concerns as the donors’ own payments would,” she wrote.
The Montana Democratic Party criticized the decision, saying it would lead to more money flooding into the state’s elections and “drown out the voices of everyday voters.”
“Montana Democrats believe elections should be decided by voters, not by whoever can write the biggest check or build the biggest political war chest,” said party chair Shannon O’Brien in a statement to MTN. “This ruling may change how national committees and campaigns spend money, but it does not change what matters here in Montana. We are going to keep organizing in every corner of this state, talking directly to voters, and fighting for a democracy where people come first.”
Former University of Montana president Seth Bodnar, running for U.S. Senate as an independent, also decried the ruling in a video posted to social media. He said it would lead to the NRSC putting more money into advertising for Republican candidate Kurt Alme, and that it demonstrated the need for a candidate running outside the two-party system.
“Today’s ruling doesn’t help Republicans or Democrats – it helps the party machines, the committees that exist for one purpose, to protect their own interests and D.C. insiders,” Bodnar said. “Now, this campaign, I don’t have a national committee, I’m not running to please one – that’s the whole point.”
As of the last campaign finance reports in May, Bodnar’s campaign had raised more than $2.1 million – significantly more than Alme, who raised almost $1.2 million. Both have raised and spent more than the other two candidates in the Senate race, Democrat Alani Bankhead and Libertarian Kyle Austin. The next reporting deadline will be July 15.
