Corporations and regulation of corporations existed before the doctrine of corporate personhood. And do you think government agencies can't be sued? Or do you think they can fund political campaigns?
You're asking "Do you think X? Or do you think Y?" here, but I know !X, _and_ I know Y. You've strung those clauses together as if they might mean something, so I confess I have no idea what tangent "fund political campaigns" runs off to, because I am not opining on the correctness of personhood but rather its history.
Before personhood, if a corporation had wronged you, you were limited to suing its trustees, its charter, or petitioning the government.
With personhood, I don't need to know who at McBigCorp decided to dump that sewage into my stream, I just need to know that it was done. I don't need to go after the trustees directly. Accountability is centralized, and the corporate entity likely has deeper pockets than the individual I might've sued for recompense.
So yes, corporations existed before corporate personhood, but they were more hazardous to public welfare and had limited remedy to abuse. The East India Companies and the railroad barons of the world were allowed to run roughshod until centralized accountability was imposed.
