More than 200 Democratic candidates for Congress have signed a pledge requiring them to turn down donations from corporate PACs, support a ban on trading stocks while in office and vote for policies to crack down on “dark money” in elections – a display of how broadly the party is embracing anti-corruption messaging ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Despite the widespread embrace, however, voters in battleground districts still do not give Democrats any advantage over the GOP when it comes to cleaning up corruption in the capital, showing how difficult it might be for the party to break through on the issue.

“Candidates understand the need to have a proactive, positive reform agenda, especially when what we’re seeing out of this administration is kind of the most brazen corruption that we have ever seen in our country’s history,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United, the group that organized the pledge. “It’s not just about winning the election, it’s also about setting up the long-term momentum and power behind these issues to be able to really pass meaningful reform.”

The group, which first gained prominence by asking candidates to reject corporate PAC money in 2018, said this new pledge is spreading faster. More than 150 candidates agreed to reject corporate PAC money then, a number the new “Unrig Washington” pledge has surpassed with more than six months to go before the midterms.

While anti-corruption messaging was prominent in 2018, the last time Democrats ran against the Trump administration in a midterm, many operatives expect it to be a dominant theme this cycle.

The list of those who have signed on to the pledge is obviously lengthy, but it includes many top candidates of this election cycle, including Rep. Chris Pappas, the party’s nominee for Senate in New Hampshire; oysterman Graham Platner in Maine; Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who won the Senate nomination in Illinois; all of the leading Democratic candidates in Colorado’s swingy 8th District and both Democratic candidates in Nebraska’s 2nd District.

In a memo set to be released Monday, the group suggests candidates use anti-corruption arguments to underscore Democrats’ near-universal messages about affordability, noting that polling found that three-quarters of voters believe corruption affects what they pay for healthcare, and that two-thirds believe it impacts the price of groceries and other everyday goods.

“These findings are critical because it means corruption is not competing with affordability. It is one of the clearest ways to talk about why costs are high, why families are getting economically squeezed, and why so many believe the system isn’t working for them,” the group wrote. “This creates a major opening for Democratic candidates.”

In an interview, Muller pointed to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) as a candidate who has successfully merged the two issues.

“Nobody is articulating this kind of frame better than he is doing right now,” she said.

Ossoff, who is running for reelection in a swing state, is theoretically vulnerable this cycle. But a GOP primary field without a clear leading candidate and his own strong messaging has both parties increasingly confident he’ll triumph in November.

“As you pay more for everything, the first family’s wealth is growing by billions of dollars,” Ossoff said at a rally in Augusta, Ga., last month. “Because they are crooks, and everybody knows it.”

But if Ossoff has an advantage on the issue, the same cannot be said for the party as a whole. A Change Research survey of voters in 62 battleground House districts commissioned by the group found voters cared quite a bit about corruption – 42% of voters ranked it among their top three policy concerns – but a 46% plurality trusted neither party to clean up corruption in Washington, while 28% trusted the GOP and 26% trusted Democrats. (Overall, the poll found Democrats with a 45% to 40% lead on the generic ballot.)

Muller understands why Democratic partisans watching the Trump administration engage in rampant self-dealing may find the result frustrating.

“Voters are ‘pox on all your houses, I don’t trust any of you,’ which can be sad given what we’re watching every day out of this administration. It leaves people wondering ‘how on earth can voters feel this way?’” she said. “It’s not going to be enough to just say Republicans are bad on corruption, or Trump is bad on corruption. We need to have a much more proactive message.”

Muller also acknowledged that gaining an advantage on the issue may require heading into territory some Democrats are uncomfortable with. End Citizens United also polled on some anti-corruption ideas more typically favored by the right, including term limits, and found they were popular.

“We need to push our side to go further, because voters are so sick of it, and that’s why Trump was able to run on it in 2016 and somewhat in 2024,” she said, without explicitly endorsing a call for term limits. “There are ways to bring in policy reforms beyond what we have in [the Unrig Washington] pledge.”

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