End Citizens United (ECU) today endorsed Senator King for re-election. A fierce critic of the disastrous Citizens United ruling, King has a proven track record of fighting to root out secret special interest money in elections.
“Senator King understands that when politicians are in the pockets of special interests, the voices of hard-working Mainers are drowned out of our democracy,” said Tiffany Muller, president and executive director of End Citizens United. “He’s leading the way in making sure elections are transparent and politicians are held accountable. We’re proud to stand with Senator King and look forward to our continued work to get unlimited, secret money out of our elections.”
“In New England we have a tradition of showing up at town meetings and speaking our minds. It’s free speech in its most pure form,” said Sen. Angus King. “But in all my years of attending town meetings, I’ve never seen anyone stand up to speak with a bag over their head. That’s essentially what dark money is – undisclosed special interests silencing the voices of Maine voters. Groups like End Citizens United have dedicated themselves to bringing back a time when everybody’s voice was equal and meant something. I am grateful for their endorsement today. And I am committed to standing with them in their fight.”
End Citizens United will connect King’s campaign with its 21,000 members in Maine and activate its 360,000 national donors to help ensure he has the resources to win. In the recent special election in Georgia, ECU’s members contributed $1.4 million in small-dollar donations directly to Jon Ossoff’s campaign. In 2016, ECU helped elect campaign finance reform champions New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan and Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, both in battleground states, by exposing their opponents’ ties to special interests. In the 2018 election cycle, ECU is projected to raise $35 million from hundreds of thousands of grassroots small-dollar donors.
ECU is a grassroots-funded organization that is dedicated to electing members of Congress who, like King, will fight to overturn Citizens United and to pass campaign finance reform that will remove unlimited, undisclosed money from our political system. In the 2016 election cycle, ECU’s grassroots members displayed their strength, raising $25 million from 300,000 donors with a $14 average contribution. Founded two years ago, today the group has over three million members.
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