Over the last several days, a torrent of companies have decided that for the good of democracy, they have to “pause” or “suspend” their political donations to politicians; some companies have even been bold enough to ask for money back from the politicians they have donated to.
Judd Legum’s Popular Info, which has been at the forefront of following the connection between corporate money and politics, reported over the weekend how companies like the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Commerce Bancshares, and Marriott all said their corporate PACs would “stop donating to any member of Congress who objected to the certification of the Electoral College vote.”
(Image via Danny Johnston/AP)
And just like we talked about yesterday how platforms wait for one of them to make a decision or take an action before falling in line, the corporate political-funding dominoes followed a similar path.
Many companies have made the calculus that the Trump-branded Republican party and the elected Republican officials who have subverted American democracy by trying to overturn an election is toxic.
AT&T’s PAC decided Monday to suspend donations to the eight Republican senators and 139 Republican House members who voted against certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s win, according to a company spokesman.
Marriott, the world’s largest hotel chain, reached a similar decision, motivated by “the destructive events at the Capitol to undermine a legitimate and fair election.” The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association said it would do the same, with the provider of health insurance to more than 100 million people pledging to end contributions “to those lawmakers who voted to undermine our democracy.”
Some like JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Facebook and Google decided to halt all political donations, no matter the party. Both sides, indeed.
JPMorgan, the largest bank in the country, made the decision to pause political giving for the next six months because of the growing political crisis following the violence at the Capitol alongside health and economic crises, said Peter Scher, JPMorgan’s head of corporate responsibility, in an interview.
“The focus of business leaders, political leaders, civic leaders right now should be on governing and getting help to those who desperately need it most right now,” said Mr. Scher, who is also chairman of the bank’s Mid-Atlantic region. “There will be plenty of time for campaigning later.”
And some, like Hallmark (did you know they have a PAC?!) want their money back.
Popular Info reports:
Hallmark, in a statement to Popular Information, didn't just rule out future donations from its PAC but demanded refunds from two Senators who objected to the Electoral College vote — $3000 from Josh Hawley (R-MO) and $5000 from Roger Marshall (R-KS).
HALLPAC, Hallmark’s political action committee, supports elected leaders from a wide variety of viewpoints—including Democrats, Republicans and Independents.
Hallmark believes the peaceful transition of power is part of the bedrock of our democratic system, and we abhor violence of any kind. The recent actions of Senators Josh Hawley and Roger Marshall do not reflect our company’s values. As a result, HALLPAC requested Sens. Hawley and Marshall to return all HALLPAC campaign contributions.
But you can also see how corporations play linguistic gymnastics through their statements.
For example, notice how State Street doesn’t mention “Republican” or any specific Republican politicians in its statement:
State Street will not support lawmakers or candidates who demonstrate views or engage in activities that are intended to undermine legitimate election outcomes. As a result, our Political Action Committee (PAC) will not contribute to lawmakers who supported last week’s efforts to undermine our democracy. Additionally, we will establish a process to evaluate contributions prospectively to ensure we are not supporting any candidate whom we believe are subverting the core democratic principles of our Constitution, especially election outcomes.
We call on all of our country’s leaders to come together, reject this violence and preserve the foundations of our democracy in order to serve the American people and unify these United States.
This careful language is in almost every corporate message about suspending donating to seditious Republicans. “Call on all of our country’s leaders to come together” misses the reality that one party has chosen to secede from reality (and then has the chutzpah to ask the other party to unite.
Which leads to a more fundamental question of these brands’ actions: is this all just performative concern and a way to have some good P.R.? It’s a similar play from when the brands came to protest over the summer.
Vox has a good argument laying out why all these companies pausing political spend is less than it seems.
While donations from PACs sound like a big deal, they reflect an increasingly small proportion of the total money in American elections. That’s especially true in the opening months of an election cycle’s off-year, and some corporations — like the three tech companies — on Monday made clear that their penalization was temporary.
To be sure, the decision has symbolic significance: Corporations from Wall Street to Silicon Valley have long sought to position themselves as honest with brokers with both parties, willing to work with Democrats and Republicans on issues important to their industries. They employ members of both parties in their Washington lobbying offices, and their donations from their corporate PACs were a prong in that strategy and largely bipartisan as well. Many (though not all) of the companies making the announcements on Monday specifically said they would withhold donations from the Republican officeholders specifically.
Additionally, Vox reports, “corporate PACs contributed just 5 percent of the money raised in the 2020 election, down from 9 percent in 2016, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.”
That’s partially because PAC contributions are capped at $5,000 per donation, a limit that hasn’t been increased since 1974, while super PACs and other outside groups can take in donations of unlimited amounts. Another factor is that savvy politicians on both sides have cultivated small-dollar donor bases that are making up larger and larger percentages of the total money in elections.
For example, Popular Info reports, during the 2020 election cycle, Marriott's PAC donated $1000 to Sen. Hawley's campaign and another $1,000 to Sen. Hawley's leadership PAC.
And don’t forget about the political cycle and how we just closed one (or starting a new one, depending on your levels of optimism).
All of this is to say that every public action a company embarks on is out of self-interest. Whenever a company has “good” news to share, it will move at the speed of light; communications teams will flood your inbox and phone lines trying to set up time to talk to an executive. But when there’s an event that might put the company in a bad light (or even a neutral light), calls, emails, texts, DMs all go unanswered.
As we’ve talked about many times over the past year, as companies have to navigate the detritus left in Trump and the Republican Party’s wake, placating everyone from activist investors to corporate watchdogs (let alone their own conscience), they have realized that younger people—their customers for the next 50 or so years—place a different emphasis in how companies operate, as well as participate in the world.
Not funding seditionaries should be an obvious move, and some good P.R. as an ancillary benefit.
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Lake Street Dive, “Hell Yeah” (Acoustic)
Some interesting links:
For the new ad guy in town:
Amazon’s ad business will gain the most share this year (CNBC)
For media companies screwing over their staff:
Condé Nast Entertainment wanted a major podcast network, but the producers say they got burned instead (The Verge)
For 33 minutes of listening to Kara Swisher interview Anna Wintour:
Anna Wintour on the Kamala Harris cover (Sway)
For new research on the importance of social platforms as our new media gatekeepers:
News Use Across Social Media Platforms in 2020 (Pew)
For temper tantrums:
President Trump lashes out at social media companies following Twitter ban (Washington Post)
For 2021 media M&A predictions:
Media could be rocked by major deals in 2021 — including a merger of WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal and takeover of MGM (Business Insider)
For shameless self-promotion (my first byline at Vice):
Content recommendation companies’ role in spreading disinformation (Vice)