The crypto example makes the point. During the 2024 cycle, the industry sought a friendlier legal structure, including efforts to shift more authority toward the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and away from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Public Citizen reported that crypto-backed super PACs had raised more than $102 million by May 2024; later reporting found the industry preparing even larger sums for the midterms as it sought regulatory gains.⁸
That is what Turner meant by investment. A political contribution may be small compared with the value of a favorable regulatory regime. A few million dollars spent in an election can be rational if billions in market value, enforcement exposure, tax treatment, or future regulation are at stake. The connection between campaign money and economic life usually does not appear as a receipt. It appears as agenda-setting, risk management, legislative caution, and silence.
Political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found that economic elites and organized business interests have substantial independent influence on U.S. policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence when their preferences diverge from those elites. Their data preceded Citizens United, so the study does not prove that the ruling created unequal influence. It shows that the weakness was already there. Citizens United gave concentrated money more room to operate inside it.⁹
That is why Hawaii matters. The state is not merely complaining that corporations have too much speech. That argument runs directly into Citizens United. Hawaii starts one step earlier. It asks what a corporation is.
A corporation is not a citizen who walks into a town meeting. It is a legal instrument. The state gives it a name, allows it to hold property, permits it to contract and sue, lets it continue indefinitely, and shields its owners from certain liabilities. Hawaii’s law says those privileges do not include the power to spend corporate treasury money influencing elections.
The bill text says “all political power in the State is inherent in the people,” and that the creation of a corporation or other artificial legal entity is “a privilege granted by the State, not a natural right.” It frames corporate political spending not as an inherent right, but as a power the state may define, withhold, or withdraw.¹⁰
If the corporation comes first as a creature of state law, and only then as a speaker in constitutional doctrine, Hawaii is asking whether the Court began the analysis one step too late. The issue is not whether a human being may speak. The issue is whether an artificial entity, created for economic purposes and protected by state-conferred privileges, must also receive the political power to shape the elections that govern the state.
The law may fail. Critics may persuade a court that Hawaii cannot escape Citizens United by calling a speech restriction a corporate-powers rule. But the supporters’ argument is not frivolous. States have always defined the powers of the corporations they create. Hawaii is asking whether political spending must be one of them.
The Court spoke of independent expenditures; the voter experiences saturation. The Court spoke of disclosure; the voter sees a committee name. The Court spoke of speech; the voter hears a voice whose source may have been carefully obscured.
Katie Porter’s whiteboard worked because it assumed something basic about democracy: if the numbers were placed in public view, citizens could still judge power for themselves.