Overview:
- Michigan ballot initiative to ban utilities, state contractors from political spending has new opposition from Consumers Energy and Blue Cross.
- The citizen-initiated legislation would ban donations and dark money spending from companies and executives.
- One company argued employees would "lose their right to association and to engage in the political process."
by SIMON D. SCHUSTER
Bridge Michigan
This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from Bridge Michigan, sign up for a free Bridge Michigan newsletter here.
Two of the major Michigan businesses being targeted by a campaign finance reform ballot proposal are funding opposition to the citizen-initiated legislation, according to a disclosure report submitted to the state.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and the parent company of Consumers Energy each donated $15,000 to Protect MI Free Speech, a new committee opposing the measure, which aims to block some of Michigan’s most influential companies from state-level political spending.
Both firms are top-of-mind for the ballot proposal’s proponents, a coalition of left-leaning activist groups calling themselves Michiganders for Money out of Politics.
Both Blue Cross and Consumers have spent millions in Michigan politics, both through donations from employee-funded political action committees and, in some instances, to run so-called “dark money” ads that support political candidates without directly telling viewers how to vote.
The proposal specifically targets Michigan’s electric utilities and state government contractors, banning the companies and their executives from directly spending to influence elections. Blue Cross Blue Shield insures state government employees, and Consumers is one of Michigan’s largest utilities.
The amendment would ban donations from within Michigan’s campaign finance system and also so-called issue advertisements funded through the nonprofit accounts that are the most common avenue for “dark money” in Michigan’s political system.
The Michigan Chamber, which opposes the new ballot initiative, has described issue advocacy as a tool “used extensively to educate the public.” By avoiding a few key phrases that would explicitly support or oppose a candidate or ballot proposal, political groups can spend unlimited amounts to advertise without having to follow any campaign finance rules.
The ballot proposal aims to cast a light on some of that spending, by requiring any outside spending group making even tangential reference to a candidate or ballot issue to report their spending totals and donors to the state in the months leading up to an election.
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First Amendment rights?
Business groups argue it amounts to an attack on free speech.
“This ballot petition disenfranchises over 900 state contractors — picking winners and losers in who can and cannot express their freedom of speech through transparent political activity,” Consumers Energy spokesperson Katie Carey told Bridge in a statement.
The type of nonprofit accounts used by Consumers and others for issues ads in the past are not required to disclose who funds them.
Michiganders for Money out of Politics is itself so far largely funded by dark money. It received $115,000 from the California-based Tides Foundation, a clearinghouse for liberal donor-advised funds through which hundreds of millions of dollars pass each year.
The group is currently circulating petitions to try to make the 2026 ballot. It will need to collect valid signatures from at least 356,958 voters to qualify.
The proposal wouldn’t impact political spending at the federal level, which regularly dwarfs state-level election spending.
Protect MI Free Speech’s treasurer is the head lobbyist for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Wendy Block. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment for the story.
BCBS noted in a statement that their PAC is “funded entirely by employees, who represent all political viewpoints and voluntarily contribute their own money to our collective work in advancing quality health care in our state” and argued the ballot proposal “silences their voices.”
Consumer Energy also alleged employees “may lose their right to association and to engage in the political process as they do today” under the legislation.
The ballot initiative’s language however, does not appear to block regular employees from contributing to campaigns and political action committees.
“Rank-and-file employees are not touched by our proposal, it’s only c-suite executives,” Sean McBrearty, one of the coalition’s organizers, said in an interview.
Under the language, that includes a company’s president, CEO, treasurer, officer with similar responsibilities, a person with “substantial” ownership or is on the board of directors.
This article first appeared on Bridge Michigan and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.