In November 2017, Lee Carter won his race for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. Though he ran as a Democrat, the party cut off support, saying he had not provided them with proper data about his campaign work. Carter, a 30-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America, says that he stopped reporting his information because of several security lapses by the party. And he suspects that there were other reasons for the party to be less-than-fully supportive of his campaign. Dominion Energy, the biggest corporate political donor in the state, gave the party $125,000 in 2016. Carter opposed the company’s plans for a natural gas pipeline and a high-voltage transmission line running through residential areas, and his platform called for a ban on corporate political contributions. "I'm openly fighting against the large corporate interests,” he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "For-profit corporations exist to make money, so if they’re giving money to a politician, it’s not out of the goodness of their heart. It’s because they're getting something in return every single time."
