Montana Democrat Sam Forstag pledges no corporate PAC money, yet federal filings show $142,851 from tech, finance, and green activist donors tied to the same elite interests he campaigns against.
Breitbart News reviewed itemized federal campaign contributions and found Montana First District Democrat Sam Forstag has taken $142,851 from individual donors linked to major technology and AI companies, finance and lobbying firms, and environmental activist groups.
Forstag tells voters he will not take corporate PAC money. The filings show large personal checks from the people who run those same corporate and activist worlds.
The split is plain in the numbers. Of the $142,851 total, $108,017.14 came from individuals in the corporate, lobbying, and finance category. Another $18,261.11 came from donors connected to AI and data-center companies. Green and activist-linked donors added $16,572.75.
Several donors maxed out at $7,000 each. They include Lone Pine Capital founder Steve Mandel, Lupa Systems CEO James Murdoch, Quadrivium Foundation co-founder Kathryn Murdoch, Medley Partners managing director Mark Heising, XN LP CEO Gaurav Kapadia, and Sageview Capital executive Scott Stuart.
Mandel’s firm is described as an anchor of The Bench, a billionaire-funded super PAC network connected to Forstag’s joint fundraising committees.
Oracle engineer Mark Jungerman of Whitefish, Montana, gave $7,000 across six contributions. Oracle is an equity partner in the Stargate initiative, a planned $500 billion AI data-center buildout.
Microsoft Chief Technology Officer and AI executive Kevin Scott gave $3,500. Scott helps drive Microsoft’s AI data-center expansion and its partnership with OpenAI.
Hollywood producer Gavin Polone also gave $7,000. After a 2016 presidential debate, Polone wrote that Donald Trump’s “objective wasn’t to get poorly educated whites to vote for him. He’s got them.” Polone has described himself as a “vegan, atheist” who wants “much stronger gun laws.”
Baupost Group CEO Seth Klarman gave $3,500. Klarman has compared Republicans to Nazis, saying Germany “had a constitution before Hitler came to power and at the end of the war they had the exact same constitution. It lasted all the way through, but democracy didn’t.”
"had a constitution before Hitler came to power and at the end of the war they had the exact same constitution. It lasted all the way through, but democracy didn’t."
Remaining money came from executives, lobbyists, consultants, attorneys, finance professionals, environmental advocates, Planned Parenthood-affiliated officials, ACLU-linked figures, and employees at Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Salesforce, Waymo, DocuSign, and Invenergy.
Former Biden Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning, listed as a conservationist with The Wilderness Society, gave $1,500. Stone-Manning has said livestock grazing on public lands “is destroying the West” and called a proposed Montana mine “philosophically abhorrent.”
"is destroying the West"
Capital Press previously described her as “an enemy of livestock grazing with ties to ecoterrorists” over involvement in a 1989 tree-spiking incident. In 2021, Republican opponent Aaron Flint noted she had described babies as an “environmental hazard” while pushing population control.
Social Security Works Executive Director Alex Lawson gave $3,500. Lawson has said:
"The villain here is the Republican ideology that says this system works... and therefore, we must destroy it."
Voter Participation Center CEO Thomas Lopach, once chief of staff to former Sen. Jon Tester, gave $2,500. His group called a Supreme Court voting-rights ruling “a devastating blow to civil rights protections.”
Forstag’s campaign website carried a “National Leaders” endorsement section featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and five other progressive lawmakers. That section disappeared sometime between June 9 and August 28, according to a September 22 report.
The campaign kept using the endorsements anyway. A September 7 fundraising email still called Forstag a “progressive brawler” and invoked the same national names. Ocasio-Cortez had campaigned with him in Missoula during the primary.
Before running, Forstag served as legislative program manager for the ACLU of Montana. He lobbied on criminal justice reform, voting rights, immigrant rights, and the state budget. He later worked at Central House Strategies on causes that included Planned Parenthood of Montana, homelessness policy, sex education, and public-library funding.
In the Montana legislature’s orbit, he opposed a bill restricting transgender-identifying students from women’s and girls’ school sports. He also opposed a measure that would have barred certain gender-transition surgeries for minors and referrals for those procedures.
Forstag’s Republican opponent is Aaron Flint, a military veteran and conservative radio host. President Donald Trump and retiring Rep. Ryan Zinke have endorsed Flint in Montana’s First Congressional District.
The district race now pairs a candidate who markets clean hands on corporate PACs with a donor list heavy on data-center executives, coastal financiers, Hollywood money, and green activists who talk openly about remaking energy, grazing, guns, and the courts.
Montana voters can read the pledge. They can also read the itemized totals.
When a candidate bans corporate PACs but cashes checks from the executives and activists who staff the same fights, the fine print matters more than the slogan.
