7 Democrats promise to support ethics bills

Seven Democratic presidential candidates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., have promised that their first legislation as president would be an ambitious cleangovernment bill, earning their campaigns an influential reform group’s stamp of approval.

End Citizens United, a grassroots advocacy group that played a key role in the 2018 midterm elections, said the seven candidates had vowed to prioritize ethics and campaign finance reform in a commitment the group is calling the “Reform First” pledge. The group said it would begin raising money for all seven candidates online and highlight their campaign activities on social media.

In addition to Warren and Buttigieg, the list of supportive Democrats includes three senators — Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Michael Bennet of Colorado — as well as former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas and Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana.

“We need sweeping anticorruption and voting rights reform to make voting easier and more secure and to ensure our democracy works for everyone,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “As president, it will be the first bill I send to Congress.”

O’Rourke said he favored legislation to ban contributions from political action committees, lower barriers to voting, end gerrymandering and impose new restrictions on lobbying.

End Citizens United — which takes its name from the 2010 Supreme Court decision, despised by liberals, that drastically loosened regulations on campaign funding — has more than 4 million members, including half a million donors. It raised nearly $9 million for candidates in last year’s elections. During that campaign, it urged candidates to reject contributions from corporate PACs.