Across the country, Democrats running to flip some of the nation’s most high-profile House seats this cycle are offering a similar pitch: Vote for me to clean up corruption in Washington.

While the specifics may vary, candidate after candidate is offering their own plans to rein in malfeasance. Most hit on similar themes: ban stock trading by members of Congress, bar corporate dollars in politics, impose term limits — even on members of the Supreme Court — and restrict members of Congress from becoming lobbyists.

It’s part of a larger trend this cycle, with Democrats making corruption a central tenet of their ads and campaign messaging, often incorporating it into their broader argument about addressing the cost of living. 

Bale Dalton, who is looking to flip Florida’s 7th district, rolled out his proposal last week, calling for a complete overhaul of what he calls an “ineffective” House Ethics Committee on Capitol Hill.

His district is currently represented by embattled Republican Rep. Cory Mills, who lost his primary in August while facing an ethics investigation over alleged campaign finance violations and sexual misconduct.

Dalton says the anti-corruption message resonates across party lines. 

“People are just so fed up,” Dalton told MS NOW. “They’re obeying the law, trying to make a better life for their kids, trying to make ends meet in this cost of living crisis that we’re in, and watching the politicians up in D.C. — fat, dumb and happy — continuing to line their pockets.”

In Virginia’s 1st district, Shannon Taylor is pitching a “serve the people first” agenda, leaning on her time as a county prosecutor to call for mandatory jail time for politicians who steal taxpayer money and a ban on stock trading and corporate PAC money. 

“Everyone is terrified about the rising costs,” Taylor said. “They’re also really angry about the system in D.C. being a corrupt political system.”

She told MS NOW that even if Congress doesn’t act on the reforms she’s seeking, she’ll self-impose them on herself. 

“If I say no corporate PAC money, then I’m not going to take it. If I say don’t do any stock trading, I’m not going to do it,” she said.

And in Pennsylvania, Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti — who won a special election for her current job when the former leader of Scranton pleaded guilty to public corruption charges — is offering her own anti-corruption proposal for Washington, including a stock trading ban. 

Cognetti’s GOP opponent — freshman Rep. Rob Bresnahan — has faced scrutiny for his extensive stock trading while in office. His team has previously said that Bresnahan has “never traded his own stocks” and “an outside financial institution manages his investments.”

But Dalton, Taylor, and Cognetti aren’t alone. 

Bob Brooks in Pennsylvania, Zach Dembo in Kentucky, Leela Gray and Pia Dandiya in Florida, and Elaine Luria in Virginia are just some of the other Democrats in key races who are offering their own proposals to cut down on what they label widespread graft in Washington.

While they lean into a message about taking on corruption, these same Democrats are not necessarily invoking a man who is poised to be at the center of many Democratic investigations of alleged public corruption next year, should the party win control of the House: President Donald Trump. 

Asked by MS NOW if they view Trump and the White House as corrupt, several of the Democrats instead cast all of Washington as a den of malfeasance — a message that allows them to criticize the system broadly rather than making Trump the sole focus of their anti-corruption pitch.

“The entire system in Washington D.C., right now has unfortunately enabled the level of corruption and grift across the board in all three branches of government,” Dalton told MS NOW. “I am completely fed up with it, as well as the folks in Florida are.”

Taylor invoked her Republican opponent, telling MS NOW, “I’m going to focus my campaign on telling the voters here in the first congressional district why Rob Wittman needs to be fired and why he embodies this broken system in Washington, D.C.”

But, she added, if Democrats “start talking about this administration, yes, I want to hold everybody accountable — people in Congress, the administration.”

And Cognetti said choices about Trump will be “up to the chair of Judiciary, the chair of Oversight.” 

She instead told MS NOW she wants to bring a “local lens” to fighting corruption and “dig into the financials, dig into the budget, the programs, and the procurement, to really be able to show that we can make a difference, that we can save taxpayers money, we can make these programs work better.”

At least one Democrat, though, did not shy from invoking Trump.

Brooks, who is running for a seat in eastern Pennsylvania, told MS NOW he is making a push for anti-corruption reforms in part because “we’re watching Donald Trump get filthy rich, and we’re losing at the gas pumps and in the grocery stores.” 

“The corruption is real, and you can see it. And I’m just tired,” he added.

Asked why invoke Trump — and not just his GOP opponent, like some of his colleagues — Brooks told MS NOW,  “Because they’re one and the same.”

“Mackenzie’s a lapdog for Donald Trump,” Brooks said.

In a statement, the campaign manager for Brooks’ opponent — Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa. — said that watching Brooks talk about fighting corruption is “laughable.” He invoked a lawsuit that Brooks had faced alleging the candidate attempted to defraud his former mother-in-law. He also noted that Brooks himself — despite his calls to ban stock trading by lawmakers — owned individual stocks as of earlier this year. 

This past summer, Mackenzie introduced a bill to require federal elected officials to divest individual stocks or put them in a blind trust. 

The Republican opponents of Dalton, Taylor, and Cognetti did not respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment.

A spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee dismissed the Democrats’ anti-corruption proposals in these key battlegrounds as little more than an election year gimmick.

“Americans have been disgusted by the level of self-serving corruption that spread like herpes through the slimy politicians who run the Democrat Party, and now they’re suddenly changing their tune because it’s an election year,” NRCC Spokesman Mike Marinella said in a statement.

“Voters see through the facade, and they know Republicans are cleaning up the rot left behind by Democrat leaders,” he added.

Notably, the message about fighting alleged malfeasance in office — or at least one plank of it — is not unique to just Democrats. 

Many Republicans too are running on restricting stock trading.

At last month’s GOP midterm convention in Texas, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., used her time on the stage to argue that “Congress should not use the sensitive information we receive on a daily basis working for the American people for private gain.”

On the campaign trail, Republicans in key battleground districts have likewise leaned into the public frustration with stock trading by elected officials. 

Republican congressional candidates Mike Beltran and Scott Singer in Florida and Aaron Flint in Montana have all called for banning the practice. Joe Mitchell in Iowa lists banning corporate PAC money and term limits among his policy goals.

On Capitol Hill, many Republican incumbents in swing seats — including Reps. Scott Perry in Pennsylvania, Zach Nunn in Iowa, Mike Lawler in New York and Jen Kiggans in Virginia — have signed on to legislation to block members of Congress from buying and selling individual stocks. 

In July, the GOP-led House passed — with universal Republican and some Democratic support — a bill to limit stock trading by members of Congress. And just last week, Senate Republicans tried to advance the bill before lawmakers left Washington for the campaign trail.

Senate Democrats blocked it, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., labeling it “feeble” because it would still allow members of Congress to keep and sell stocks they already own.

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From MS Now.