A national campaign finance reform group on Wednesday endorsed U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, the first-term Aurora Democrat who unseated a Republican incumbent last year while refusing to accept contributions from corporate political action committees.

End Citizens United, a political committee devoted to reducing the role of big money in politics, included Crow and 25 other freshman Democrats in competitive districts in its initial round of endorsements for the 2020 election.

A spokesman said the group is committed to spending a combined $10 million – raised from an army of small-dollar, grassroots donors – to make sure the reform-minded candidates it’s backing have the resources to win another term.

“As one of the first House candidates in the country to reject corporate PAC money, Jason has led from the front on campaign finance reform,” said End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller in a statement.

“Even though he’s only been in office for a few months, he’s already delivering on promises by passing the most comprehensive anti-corruption and reform legislation in a generation. Crow’s commitment to reform and families in the district will make him a top target of mega-donors and special interests hell-bent on protecting the status quo in Washington, but we have his back.”

Crow, an attorney and Army Ranger veteran, defeated five-term U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman last year by 11 percentage points in the battleground 6th Congressional District, which includes Aurora and parts of Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties.

Campaign finance reform was a central issue in Crow’s campaign, and the Democrat’s first TV ad of the 2018 campaign led with Crow’s pledge that he wasn’t “going to take a dime of corporate PAC money.”

The first legislation Crow introduced after being sworn in at the beginning of the year was to prohibit high-dollar donors from hiding political contributions by passing them through certain types of nonprofits.

The bill, dubbed the “End Dark Money Act,” passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives as part of HR-1, an omnibus reform measure known as the “For the People Act,” though Senate GOP leaders have said they intend to block its passage in the upper chamber.

“The greatest challenge we face in Washington today is a corrupt political system dominated by ‘big money,'” Crow said in a statement.

“Whether it is tackling climate change or gun violence prevention, too often common-sense solutions fail because politicians are more beholden to their big donors than the people they were elected to represent.” He added that he was honored to receive the group’s endorsement again and plans to “continue the fight against the dark money special interests.”

The reform group’s support includes connecting Crow’s campaign with its 7,400 members who live in the congressional district and urging a national network of 530,000 donors to pitch in, a spokesman said. The group raised $44 million in the 2018 election cycle cycle – with an average donation of $14 – and counts more than 4 million members nationwide.

The turning point, Muller said, was when surveys conducted in early 2017 by the group found that voters not only agreed there was too much big money in politics, but felt it was having a palpable effect on their lives. In other words, she said, campaign finance reform wasn’t just sound policy, it was good politics for Democrats to lead with the issue.

Critics of the “no corporate PAC” pledge point out it’s an easy stance for challengers to make, because corporate PACs aren’t exactly lining up to shower them with donations, but Crow is pledging to stick with it as an incumbent.

(Not a single incumbent member of Colorado’s delegation, Republican or Democrat, took the pledge for last year’s election, and so far none of the incumbents are joining Crow this cycle.)

Right before the 2018 election – when polls showed him on a path to victory – Crow told Roll Call that two lobbyists had approached him asking if he intended to drop the pledge if he won election.

“It just stuck out to me as frankly everything that’s wrong with our politics right now,” Crow said.