End Citizens United president says U.S. Supreme Court decision already impacting midterms

“What we’re seeing across the country is already an impact on whether or not candidates are out doing town halls, whether they are answering questions from voters themselves,” she said on the Kansas Reflector Podcast.

Muller called the court’s decision “Citizens United 2.0,” referring to the landmark 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that permitted corporations and outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections. The June decision in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission eliminated federal limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates.

“Those limits really existed to help prevent corruption and to make sure that the big money donors weren’t just able to funnel all of their money through the party committee and into a campaign,” Muller said. “But those limits are gone.”

Kansas’ four U.S. House seats are up for reelection, and each race is contested. Plus, one of the state’s U.S. Senate seats is competitive because of powerful fundraising from Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall and his Democratic opponent, the Rev. Adam Hamilton.

In addition to big spending on this year’s midterms, Muller said the ruling means voters could see “more attack ads, more negative campaigning, more billionaire money in our elections, and politicians and candidates that are even more disconnected and unresponsive to the actual people.”

Before the Citizens United decision, during the 2008 election cycle, billionaires spent $16 million, and in 2024, they spent $2.6 billion, Muller said.

“So, if billionaires were donating $1 million a day in 2008, it would have only taken them 16 days to reach how much they funded in our election. But in 2024, it would have taken them seven years,” she said.

End Citizens United endorses candidates who take an “unrig Washington” pledge, which means they don’t take corporate PAC money, support banning congressional stock trading and root out dark money. None of Kansas’ congressional candidates have taken the pledge, but one of Hamilton’s fellow Democratic primary candidates, Army veteran Noah Taylor, did.

Nearly 270 candidates signed onto the “unrig Washington” pledge ahead of the 2026 primaries, which Muller said was a new record for the organization.

“I think what you’re seeing is an electorate that is demanding change, that is tired of Washington working just for the people with the biggest checkbooks and showing people that you are prepared to do political reform and that you are running your campaign differently is a critical part of winning over voters,” she said.

Muller has been the president of End Citizens United since 2016. She previously worked for political campaigns and causes, and she served on the Topeka City Council in 2004, becoming the first openly gay elected official in Kansas. 

She said it is a title she is proud to hold.

At the time, she said, the LGBTQ+ community was “being used as a political wedge issue to try to drive turnout around a presidential election.”

Anti-gay marriage amendments were pushed in more than 30 states across the country, she said. Kansas passed one in 2005.

“Even something as simple as not being fired from your job or not being kicked out of your house because you are gay was was not guaranteed, and that’s what we were fighting for there in Topeka. I am proud of the work that we did in Topeka. I’m proud of the role that I played in it,” she said.

“This country can change for the better very rapidly when people work together and push it toward justice,” she added.