Buttigieg speaks on Montana Plan, hosts town hall in Butte
Jordan Hansen
BUTTE (Daily Montanan) — Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was greeted by more than 1,000 people on Sunday, speaking to an energetic crowd in The Mother Lode Theatre about getting corporate money out of politics.
Organizers and advocates in Montana are pushing for a citizen’s statutory initiative I-194, the Montana Plan, which seeks to remove corporate spending from politics. The Transparent Election Initiative, a nonprofit organization led by former Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Jeff Mangan, is leading the effort.
More than 3,000 people sent in an RSVP for the event, organizers said, and The Mother Lode Theatre — capacity 1,200 — was full to the brim, with a carryover event at the Knights of Columbus bar next door. Organizers said they have about half the number of needed signatures, slightly more than 30,000, which must be submitted by June 19. If the signatures are gathered, the issue will appear on the November ballot in an effort to create a new law.
Multiple speakers, including Buttigieg, pointed to Butte’s history with politicians, corporations and spending on elections. Specifically, they talked about the Copper King era, which led to the state’s Corrupt Practices Act, a 1912 law that followed a bribery scandal.
“Butte, Montana, knows a thing or two about what happens when special interests and corporations get out of control,” Buttigieg said. “These days when we say that corporations are buying politicians, we usually mean it more as kind of a metaphor. There was a time in Montana where it was literally true, and they say that William Clark said he never bought a man who wasn’t for sale, wearing that corruption out in the open, something we’re starting to get familiar with again.”
In a media scrum after the event, Buttigieg said he came across the Montana Plan a few months ago and became interested in it. He’s been outspoken against the Citizens United case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court enshrined the right for corporations to be considered “artificial persons” in the eyes of the law.
“I thought this really is a very creative way to establish this principle in America’s belief without running afoul of (the Citizen’s United) case,” Buttigieg said.
Buttigieg pointed to the “explosion” of special interest funding, the millions of dollars spent in recent elections in the state. He also said that there were 370,000 political ads in Montana in 2024, and the U.S. Senate race ended up costing $487 per voter.
He pointed to other, long-term goals he has as well — changing the U.S. Constitution to stop corporate spending, as well as establishing term limits for U.S. Supreme Court justices.
On the potential for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Buttigieg quipped that “prohibition didn’t really go over well in Butte to begin with.”
“The tradition of this state shows that you don’t have to accept the unacceptable, and that’s what the Montana Plan is,” Buttigieg said. “The cleverness of the Montana Plan is it flips the script on these corporations that have claimed to have the exact same civil rights that you and I do — and don’t get me wrong, I want businesses to thrive, I want businesses to be treated fairly — but a corporation is not the same thing as a person.”
Former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock also spoke to the long history of corporate interests influencing politics, even bringing up one famous case where William Clark and Marcus Daly spent millions in today’s dollars to influence a U.S. Senate election.
“This fight means a great deal to each and every one of us as Montanans, but it also means a great deal to our nation and our democracy,” Bullock said.
One of the loudest cheers came when Buttigieg mentioned data centers, a hot-button topic in Butte — and throughout Montana — as NorthWestern Energy, the state’s largest energy provider, is in the midst of a high-profile potential merger with Black Hills Corp.
That push is at least in part due to data centers looking to Montana as a potential location for their operations.
“You’re not alone if you believe that if somebody wants to come in and put a data center, they ought to have to prove to the satisfaction of the community and its leaders,” Buttigieg said, adding, “You’re not alone if you recognize that in order for those technologies to keep all those promises they’re making, about a shorter work week and more money in your pocket, instead of even more concentrated wealth and power in even fewer hands, we are going to have to take control of that as a matter of policy choice.”
Buttigieg, took questions for more than 30 minutes following his speech, touching on a variety of issues, including civility in politics. Buttigieg, pointing out he spends time on conservative television, said he can’t blame people for not “embracing” his point of view if they’ve never heard it.
“I think that civility would improve if we had more outcomes that at least roughly reflected what most Americans believe,” Buttigieg said. “We’re always going to have things we disagree on. We’re going to have 50/50 issues, and by the way, we’re going to have issues sometimes where the popular thing is not always the right thing.”