 | |
| Formation | 2015 [1] |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
President and executive director | Tiffany Muller [2] |
| Website | endcitizensunited |
End Citizens United (ECU) is a political action committee in the United States. [3] The organization works to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission , which deregulated limits on independent expenditure group spending for or against specific candidates. [4] It is focused on driving larger campaign donations out of politics, with the goal of electing "campaign-finance reform champions" to Congress by contributing to and raising money for these candidates, as well as running independent expenditures. [5] End Citizens United was founded in 2015, operating in its first election cycle during 2016 with more than $25 million in funding. [6]
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The organization has endorsed Democratic candidates such as Zephyr Teachout, [7] Hillary Clinton, [8] Russ Feingold, [1] Beto O'Rourke, [9] Elizabeth Warren, [10] and Jon Ossoff. [11] For the 2016 election, it was one of the largest outside groups funding the campaigns of U.S. Senators Maggie Hassan and Catherine Cortez Masto, spending a combined $4.4 million on the races. [12] By mid-2017, End Citizens United had raised more than $7.5 million from grassroots donations, and planned to raise $35 million for the 2018 election cycle. [11] In 2020, End Citizens United spent 41% ($16.1 million) of its income on media, 17% ($6.5 million) on staff salaries, and 15% ($5.7 million) on contributions to candidates and strategy and research work. [13]
In early 2018, an anonymous U.S.-based contractor paid at least 3,800 micro job workers to manipulate search results when people searched for the PAC via Google. [14]
During the 2018 elections, End Citizens United organized a no corporate PAC pledge, and around 185 Democratic candidates agreed not to take corporate PAC money, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris. [15] [16]