Prior research on corporate political activities has focused on the structure of political institutions and how they create entry points or veto points for firms employing political strategies. Our study extends the literature by shifting the focus of analysis to the individual level and highlighting the heterogeneities of individual politicians’ political ideologies. We contend that the wide range of political ideologies of politicians create entry points for firms to influence a divisive policy issue. Using the U.S. imports from China as the policy context, we find that U.S. firms from counties more exposed to Chinese import competition spend more on campaign contribution to congressional candidates. In particular, they target politicians who are ideologically aligned with their policy preference instead of politicians who are ideologically opposed to their preference. We further show that the tendency of seeking entry points through ideological alignment is strengthened when the candidate is a powerful incumbent but attenuated when the candidate faces a tight race in the election. Our study contributes to the corporate political strategy literature by highlighting the role of individual politicians’ ideology in creating entry points and therefore shifting the focus from the institutional level to the individual level. Implications to the political ideology and international trade literatures are also discussed.