A Democrat running for a Central Florida seat on the edge of the House battleground unveiled an anti-corruption plan Thursday that calls for overhauling the Ethics Committee, joining other candidates who’ve made fighting corruption a campaign focal point this year. 

Bale Dalton, a former NASA chief of staff, is running for Florida’s open 7th District, where Republican Rep. Cory Mills lost an August primary while facing an Ethics panel inquiry and sexual misconduct allegations. 

Dalton is set to square off against former TV news anchor Ryan Elijah, who defeated Mills by 13 points for the Republican nomination. While he won’t be facing an embattled incumbent in November, Dalton said voters in the district remain focused on accountability – and want to see more of it from Congress.

“We’ve reached a high point of a seeming nonchalance and acceptance of the folks in Washington, D.C., of this just never-before-seen level of corruption and grift,” Dalton said in an interview. “Folks are completely fed up with it.”

Dalton’s anticorruption plan, shared exclusively with CQ Roll Call, calls for banning congressional stock trading, banning federal government employees and elected officials from betting on prediction markets and stripping taxpayer-funded pensions, among other things, from members of Congress found guilty of ethics violations or who resigned from office during an ongoing ethics investigation. He also said that the House Ethics Committee needs to move more quickly and be more transparent, and that members should be subject to independent audits on their financial disclosures. 

While Dalton called Mills the “poster child” for voters’ ethics concerns, he also criticized Elijah for having indicated on a Florida candidate form that he would trade stocks while in office, if elected. Elijah told Politico that he checked the box on trading stocks “in the interest of full transparency,” since he didn’t yet know how his retirement account would be managed. Dalton, whose financial disclosure report also shows he holds several stocks, indicated on his own form that he did not intend to trade stocks if elected.

Elijah also faced an ethics complaint over not reporting details of certain assets on the financial disclosure form filed with the House clerk. In a statement to Florida Politics last month, his campaign acknowledged the error and said it would amend the filing.

The 7th District is among several Florida seats that Democrats see as potential pickup opportunities this year. But Republicans have dominated elections in the Sunshine State in recent cycles. And the state is using a new congressional map that gives Republicans the advantage in 24 of Florida’s 28 districts. While several redrawn Democrat-held seats remain competitive, flipping the 7th District would be a heavy lift, especially after Mills lost his primary. President Donald Trump would have carried the seat by more than 12 points in 2024, according to calculations by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, which rates the race Likely Republican. 

Dalton is far from the only Democrat running in a red-leaning district to focus on corruption. In Tennessee’s 5th District, Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder vowed in his campaign’s first television ad to offer a “sweeping anti-corruption law” on his first day in Congress. And in Virginia’s 1st District, prosecutor Shannon Taylor has released an anti-corruption agenda.

In a memo this week, Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC with ties to Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, said Democrats should clearly tie corruption to rising costs.

“Do not sacrifice the cost piece in favor of communicating about corruption alone, as corruption charges that are not anchored to costs do not clear the bar,” the memo reads.

But it’s not just Democratic candidates focusing on anticorruption messaging. 

A new ad from former Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer, who is challenging Florida Democrat Jared Moskowitz in the battleground 25th District, says he would “ban all stock trading” by members, adding, “D.C. corruption has to end.”

And in Virginia’s 2nd District, Republican incumbent Jen Kiggans, who faces a rematch against former Rep. Elaine Luria, has criticized her predecessor over trading stocks while in office and previously opposing a ban on members of Congress trading stocks. Luria has since reversed that stance.