Corporate America's Bond With Republican Party Frays In Post-Trump Era

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Corporate America is getting pissed at the GOP and trump https://www.huffpost.com/entry/corporate-america-bond-with-republican-party-frays_n_607314cbc5b6616dcd79d4b0

For more than a half-century, the voice emerging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s monolithic, Beaux Arts-styled building near the White House was predictable: It was the embodiment of American business and, more specifically, a shared set of interests with the Republican Party.

The party’s bond with corporate America, however, is fraying.

Fissures have burst open over the GOP’s embrace of conspiracy theories and rejection of mainstream climate science, as well as its dismissal of the 2020 election outcome. The most recent flashpoint was in Georgia, where a new Republican-backed law restricting voting rights drew harsh criticism from Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola, whose headquarters are in the state, and resulted in Major League Baseball pulling the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta.....

James Bailey, a management professor at George Washington University, published an analysis last year that suggested people who identified as Democrats cared more about a company’s political activity than Republicans do. Of business people, he said the uproar over the Georgia voting law “is a great opportunity for them to get on board with the young socially active consumer and to do so without much cost.”

Just as important, Democratic counties have become the primary engines for growth. The counties that backed Biden last year account for 71% of all U.S. economic activity, according to the Brookings Institution.

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. Republicans are bad fucking news for business.

Ask Jim Jorden or Matt Geartz.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. CEOs Plan New Push on Voting Legislation

This will be fun to watch

Link to tweet

Dozens of chief executives and other senior leaders gathered on Zoom this weekend to plot what several said big businesses should do next about new voting laws under way in Texas and other states.

Kenneth Chenault, the former chief executive of American Express Co. , and Kenneth Frazier, CEO of Merck & Co., urged the leaders to collectively call for greater voting access, according to several people who attended. Messrs. Chenault and Frazier cautioned businesses against dropping the issue and asked CEOs to sign a statement opposing what they view as discriminatory legislation on voting, the people said.

A statement could come early this week, the people said, and would build on one that 72 Black executives signed last month in the wake of changes to Georgia’s voting laws. Mr. Chenault told executives on the call that several leaders had signaled they would sign on, including executives at PepsiCo Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc., T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and Hess Corp. , among others, according to the people. PayPal confirmed it has signed the statement. PepsiCo, T. Rowe Price and Hess didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

As more companies and their leaders have spoken out on the issue in recent weeks, their stands have drawn the ire of Republican state and federal legislators who say companies are miscasting the matter and shouldn’t act as shadow lawmakers. Meanwhile, progressive activists and others who oppose the laws have said that the actions leaders are taking aren’t strong enough. Many CEOs now feel a duty, or pressure, to make their views explicitly known to employees and others, executive advisers said.