Senate Democrats are gearing up to make President Trump’s lavish new White House ballroom a prominent issue in the midterm elections, but several prominent Senate Democratic contenders have also accepted contributions from corporations funding the ballroom, muddling the message.
Some Democrats have accepted tens of thousands of dollars from donors affiliated with companies that have backed Trump’s controversial ballroom project, something that could become an issue in contested Senate primaries in Michigan and Minnesota, where establishment-backed candidates are battling progressives.
Two candidates favored by the Democratic establishment in Michigan and Minnesota — Reps. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and Angie Craig (D-Minn.) — have each accepted well over $120,000 in contributions from the employees and political action committees (PACs) of corporations that have funded Trump’s 90,000-square-foot ballroom.
But other Democrats running for the Senate have also taken money from donors who work for companies that funded Trump’s ballroom, including Rep. Chris Pappas in New Hampshire and state Rep. Josh Turek in Iowa — though not nearly as much as Stevens and Craig.
Outsider Democratic candidate Graham Platner in the Maine Senate race has even take a few thousand dollars from donors working for companies that have funded the ballroom and leadership PACs that have taken PAC money from those companies.
Campaign fundraising records filed with the Federal Election Commission show the Haley Stevens for Senate campaign accepted $10,000 in contributions from the BlackRock Funds Services Group’s PAC after Trump announced the ballroom project in July of 2025.
BlackRock is one of dozens of companies that have funneled money into building the ballroom, though the White House did not initially disclose that BlackRock was a donor when releasing a list of corporate donors in October.
Stevens has also taken money from donors linked to companies that have funded the ballroom despite criticizing Trump’s project to replace the historic East Wing.
She slammed Trump in October on social media, posting a news story about Trump tearing down the East Wing to build what was projected at the time to be a $250 million ballroom.
“While our families are struggling to keep up with rising costs, Trump is focused on tearing the White House apart — literally and figuratively,” she wrote on the social platform X.
Her campaign accepted $48,000 in contributions during the first quarter of 2026 from donors employed by companies that funded Trump’s ballroom project or from lobbyists who represent companies that supported the ballroom, according to campaign finance records.
For example, her campaign accepted contributions from senior employees at Amazon, Apple, Comcast, Google and Microsoft as well as from lobbyists representing Altria, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Palantir and Ripple.
Stevens’s Senate and House campaigns accepted more than $120,000 in contributions from PACs linked to companies that have funded Trump’s ballroom construction from 2019 to 2025, public records show.
Stevens’s progressive challengers in Michigan’s Senate Democratic primary say the fundraising windfall shows the need to shake up the Democratic establishment in Washington.
“Haley Stevens’s campaign is powered by corporate PACs, MAGA donors and the Washington, D. C., establishment. It’s no surprise the same candidate who voted to thank Trump’s ICE agents is also taking money from the corporate PACs of companies building Trump’s ballroom,” Jackson Boaz, a spokesman for Mallory McMorrow, a progressive candidate vying with Stevens for the Senate Democratic nomination, said.
While Stevens, who is viewed as more centrist, is favored by Senate Democratic leaders, McMorrow is backed by Democrats who want bigger change in Washington, such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N. M.).
McMorrow has also called on Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N. Y.) to step down as party leader.
The contributions from donors affiliated with companies funding Trump’s ballroom is giving ammunition to Stevens’s other primary opponent, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the former county health director who’s made “Money Out of Politics” a slogan in his Senate campaign.
“It’s not surprising when folks who’ve built careers on the support of corporate PACs and lobbyists continue to take money from the same donors bankrolling Trump’s agenda,” Sophie Pollack, a spokesperson for El-Sayed’s campaign, said.
“It just tells you that if they’re elected, they’ll do exactly the same thing as all the other corporate politicians. Abdul’s never taken that money because he never wants to engage in that kind of politics,” the spokesperson added.
El-Sayed, who is open to shaking up the Senate Democratic leadership structure in Washington, has the backing of progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Caitlin Legacki, a spokesperson for Stevens’s campaign, said, “Haley is focused on fighting for Michigan families and standing up to Donald Trump’s disastrous policies that are raising costs and putting Michigan jobs at risk,” when asked about the corporate contributions.
Daniel Weiner, the director of elections and government at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that advocates for a strong democracy, said the “transactional” nature of politics today, as highlighted by the ballroom controversy, may put more candidates “in difficult positions” and require them to face “tough questions” about special interest influence.
“The increasingly blatantly transactional nature of our politics, which are only getting more transactional, is going to probably be putting more and more candidates in difficult positions because you’ve got this just enormous influence operation happening in Washington right now,” he said.
“It is going to lead more and more candidates to have to answer tough questions when they are on the campaign trail. Often times — and this is what gives me a little bit of hope — it is actually when a candidate felt their honor was being questioned that they pushed hardest for reform,” he said, citing corruption-related criticisms for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and President Teddy Roosevelt that spurred them to reform politics.
Craig, the fourth-term House lawmaker from Minnesota, accepted $17,300 in contributions during the first quarter of 2026 from donors employed by corporations that donated to the ballroom, according to campaign finance records.
Those donors include the chief policy officer at Coinbase, a senior advisor at Comcast, an engineer at Lockheed Martin, the chief technology officer at Microsoft and a general director at Union Pacific.
Campaign records also show that from 2016 through 2025, Angie Craig for Congress and Angie Craig for Minnesota accepted $114,000 in contributions from PACs linked to companies that have contributed to the ballroom construction.
Those donors include Comcast, T-Mobile, Amazon, Microsoft, Caterpillar, NextEra Energy and Google.
A spokesperson for Lieutenant Gov. Peggy Flanagan, the progressive who is challenging Craig for the Senate Democratic nomination in Minnesota, criticized the congresswoman for raking in corporate PAC money.
“Peggy is the only candidate in this race not taking corporate PAC money. Congresswoman Craig has taken millions of dollars of corporate PAC money at a moment when people are struggling to afford housing, groceries, gas and healthcare,” said Lexi Byler, a spokesperson for Flanagan’s campaign.
Those contributions are coming under scrutiny after Craig said she was “outraged” by the decision to tear down the East Wing to build the ballroom.
“I am absolutely outraged with what’s happening at the White House and the destruction of the White House,” Craig told MSNBC host Alex Witt in October.
“To have the president without consultation literally desecrating the White House. To put up a structure that is going to be much larger than the entire White House, I can’t think of anything that is a metaphor more fully for the destruction that is being caused by this administration,” she said.
“We ought to make the damn companies who have built it tear it back down and restore the White House to its actual structure,” Craig added.
Antoine Givens, a spokesperson for the Craig for Minnesota campaign, said that Craig has fought hard to clean up “Trump’s chaos and corruption” and has a record of promoting anti-corruption policies.
“No one in this race has worked harder to clean up Washington and fight Donald Trump’s chaos and corruption than Angie Craig. She has led the fight to ban members of Congress from trading stocks and from becoming lobbyists after they leave office,” Givens said.
The campaign spokesman also noted that Craig’s opponent, Flanagan, raised “millions of corporate dollars” when she served as chair of the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association (DLGA), “including from the pharma, tobacco, and oil and gas industries.”
While serving as chair of the DLGA, Flanagan raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from Union Pacific, Amazon, Google, Lockheed Martin, Meta and NextEra Energy — all companies that have funded the construction of a new White House ballroom.
Flanagan served as chair of the DLGA in 2024, a year before Trump was president and before those companies gave money toward the ballroom project.
In the New Hampshire Senate race, campaign finance records show that in the fourth quarter of 2025, the Chris Pappas for Senate campaign accepted more than $14,000 in contributions from individuals working for companies that have given money to construct the White House ballroom.
Those companies include Apple, Amazon, Coinbase, Google and Lockheed Martin.
Gates MacPherson, a spokesperson for Chris Pappas for Senate, emphasized that Pappas does not take corporate PAC money.
“And he vehemently opposes construction of Donald Trump’s ballroom regardless of how it’s funded,” the spokesperson said. “Chris remains focused on lowering costs for Granite Staters and unlike his opponent John Sununu, he does not support the Republican proposal to use taxpayer dollars to fund Trump’s vanity project.”
In the Iowa Senate race, campaign finance records show that Josh Turek for Iowa accepted contributions in the first quarter of 2026, totaling $7,550 from several donors who listed ballroom funders — Apple, Google and Microsoft — as their employers.
A Turek campaign spokesperson emphasized that the Iowa Democrat is not accepting corporate PAC money in his Senate race and pointed out that Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson has accepted over $3.6 million in corporate PAC money.
“Josh is grateful to the 53,000 individuals and counting who have chipped in an average of $33 because they know that Iowa needs a U. S. senator who will fight for working families, not special interests and big corporations,” said the spokesperson.
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