U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., has made a point in recent appeals to supporters that she serves in Congress free from corporate influence. “Hi, it’s Becca,” she wrote in an email to potential campaign donors last month. “I don’t take corporate PAC money.”
But a recent financial disclosure filed by a political action committee Balint uses to support and win favor with other members of Congress — known as a leadership PAC — paints a less clear-cut picture of the second-term representative’s fundraising.
Over the first half of 2025, Balint’s “Courage PAC” accepted thousands of dollars in contributions from political action committees tied to major corporations, according to its latest Federal Election Commission report.
The leadership PAC is separate from Balint’s main campaign account, or what the FEC calls a “principal campaign committee.”
According to its July 31 filing, Balint’s leadership PAC reported $13,500 in contributions over the first half of the year. More than half of that total came from political action committees linked to big-name companies: $5,000 from Nike’s federal PAC; $2,500 from a PAC tied to Universal Music Group; and $1,000 from Google’s federal PAC.
Some of those contributions came at or around the same time Balint was disavowing corporate support to potential donors. Her leadership PAC reported receiving the Google donation, for instance, on June 12; less than a week later, she wrote in an email seeking donations directly to her campaign that “unlike other politicians, Becca doesn’t take money from big corporate donors with a hidden agenda — she relies on support from people like you who pitch in $10 or $5 at a time.”
The remaining $5,000 in last month’s report came from Equality PAC, which is the political arm of the Congressional Equality Caucus and raises money to elect more openly LGBTQ+ people — such as Balint — to the U.S. House and Senate.
Balint’s leadership PAC also accepted more than $12,000 from corporate PACs during the 2024 election cycle, according to previous FEC filings. That included donations from PACs tied to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Amazon, Paramount, Sony Entertainment and Toyota, as well as the Nike, Universal Music Group and Google-affiliated PACs.
Many members of Congress, including the two other members of Vermont’s delegation, have their own leadership PACs. Politicians often use these PACs to fundraise for other candidates within their party, which can in turn bolster their own image and influence.
Leadership PACs are legally separate from politicians’ own campaigns, though, and the former cannot directly fundraise for the latter. That’s a point Sophie Pollock, a Balint spokesperson, made in a statement to VTDigger about Balint’s PAC’s fundraising.
“These funds are used to donate to other campaigns that the Congresswoman believes in, progressive candidates rooted in their communities, fighting for working people,” Pollock said. “To be clear, these funds do not go toward Rep. Balint’s campaign for her own reelection.”
She added that Balint sees her leadership PAC as a tool to help elect more members of Congress who will counter President Donald Trump’s administration in the coming years. Right now, Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress.
“She’s laser focused on taking back the Republican controlled House that’s doing so much damage. We must defend our democracy from Donald Trump,” Pollock said. “The stakes are too high.”
Filings show Balint’s leadership fund has contributed in recent months to Rep. Chris Pappas, D-New Hampshire, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in 2026; Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, who narrowly overcame a Republican challenge to her seat in 2024; and JoAnna Mendoza, a Democrat running for a GOP-held House seat in Arizona.
Still, the recent big-brand donations to Balint’s leadership PAC stand out compared to the list of contributors, over the same time period, for the leadership PACs used by Vermont’s Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Sen. Peter Welch.
Sanders’ leadership PAC, called “Progressive Voters of America,” reported a total of $200,650 from at least 179 contributions over the first half of the year, according to FEC filings. Nearly all of those came from individual donors, filings show, while just one — $5,000 from the National Education Association, or NEA — came from a PAC.
Welch’s leadership PAC — “Maple PAC” — raised $70,500 in that time from at least 34 contributions. Most of that money came from PACs, though none are affiliated with corporations. The largest contributors, at $5,000 apiece, include PACs representing the hospitality industry, mortgage bankers, realtors, dermatologists, broadcasters, sheet metal workers and electric co-ops, according to the committee’s latest filing.
Neither of the senators’ leadership PACs reported contributions from corporations during the 2024 election cycle, either, previous FEC records show.
Matthew Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College, said it’s common for leadership PACs to take in money from many different sources, including corporations. Balint is not running afoul of any laws by spending corporate money on other candidates she likes, he said. But Dickinson added the leadership PAC’s activities could appear “in tension” with Balint’s campaign messaging, which in part entices people to donate using a pledge that she takes no corporate contributions.
“It’s all legal. But perhaps, ethically, some might view that it tarnishes the claim not to accept corporate money,” Dickinson said in an interview. “She’s not lying in her email. But she’s not telling you the whole story.”
The latest FEC report filed for Balint’s campaign account, which is called “Becca Balint for Vermont,” also lists a handful of donations from PACs that are tied to corporations — something that would directly conflict with Balint’s campaign messaging. But Pollock said the campaign had, as of last week, rejected those donations and was returning them. (The donations made up a relatively small percentage of the total receipts.)
“Rep. Balint does not and will never take corporate PAC money into her own campaign account. Period,” Pollock said in a statement.
July’s FEC filings show that about two-thirds of the money Balint’s campaign brought in over the first half of the year came from individuals. Much of the rest came from PACs representing different industries, labor interests or cooperatives — including one, notably, that featured in the contentious final stages of Balint’s 2022 primary race against Molly Gray. Balint beat Gray and was later elected to her first term.
At the time, Balint’s campaign skewered Gray over a donation Gray received from a PAC tied to American Crystal Sugar Company, which is the country’s largest producer of beet sugar. Balint’s campaign charged that the Minnesota-based cooperative was the “number one donor to GOP congresspeople who willfully encouraged and supported the insurrection on Jan. 6th.” Later that year, a report from the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found that American Crystal Sugar’s PAC ranked among the top campaign contributors to members of Congress who voted against the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Balint was also caught up in controversy following the 2022 primary after campaign filings revealed that Nishad Singh, then a top advisor to the now-disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, had donated $1.1 million to a PAC that then used Singh’s money to buy pro-Balint advertisements. Balint’s campaign later said it had no coordination with Singh during that process.
This April, Balint’s campaign took a $5,000 donation from American Crystal Sugar’s PAC, FEC filings show. (In both the 2022 and 2024 election cycles, the PAC donated more to Democrats than to Republicans, according to an OpenSecrets analysis.)
Asked for comment about that contribution, Pollock said only that Balint “accepts donations from agriculture associations who support her progressive agenda.”
“She’s looking ahead toward taking back the House,” Pollock said.
Erin Petenko, VTDigger’s data reporter, contributed to this story.
