Presidential candidate Steve Bullock's (D., Mont.) campaign finance plan would prevent members of Congress from fundraising before completing half their term—a rule his gubernatorial campaign broke, state election records indicate.
Bullock announced his plan during an interview with MSNBC Live host Ali Velshi.
"I want people that get elected and sent to Washington, D.C., for just half of the time, half of their term, to actually focus on doing their job," Bullock said.
"So what I would make it is if you're a senator, you can't actually start running for office or raising money until three years in. During that three years, I'd expect you to actually talk to your constituents, attend committee meetings, maybe even build relationships with folks across the aisle," he said.
Bullock told Velshi that elected officials in Montana close their campaign accounts after their election.
"Even a state like Montana, what we do after we get elected—we have to close down our campaign account," he said.
But records show that Bullock set up his 2016 reelection campaign account in August 2013, just seven months after first being elected governor.
Within his first two years, Bullock raised $318,822, according to records retrieved from the Montana Campaign Electronic Reporting System.
The records also show that while Bullock's presidential campaign is not accepting corporate PAC money, his gubernatorial campaign did. In 2013 and 2014, Bullock raised at least $14,960 in corporate PAC donations from health insurance and pharmaceutical companies like Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and UnitedHealth Group.
