Name: Corporate donors flee Republican Party following Capitol Hill riot, and it's only the beginning - ABC News
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Corporate donors flee Republican Party following Capitol Hill riot, and it's only the beginning - ABC News

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Corporate donors flee Republican Party following Capitol Hill riot, and it's only the beginningShareDisney has had enough.So has Coca-Cola, Walmart, Hallmark, Amazon, Airbnb and Mastercard.After last week's violent riot on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, which left five people dead, dozens of the world's biggest corporations are pulling their political donations from America's Republicans.The companies — many consistent Republican donors in the past — are targeting the 147 Republicans who still challenged the results of America's presidential election after the Capitol building was stormed by Donald Trump's supporters on January 6.Some companies say those Republicans will receive no donations for the rest of their political lives."The insurrection at our nation's Capital was a direct assault on one of our country's most revered tenets: the peaceful transition of power," a Disney spokesman told Politico this week."In the immediate aftermath of that appalling siege, Members of Congress had an opportunity to unite — an opportunity that some sadly refused to embrace."In light of these events, we have decided we will not make political contributions in 2021 to lawmakers who voted to reject the certification of the Electoral College votes."For the Republican Party, which has now lost control of the House and Senate, as well as the presidency, the loss of corporate donations to hundreds of members has hit especially hard at a time when it needs to rebuild.The Party is not only witnessing donors flee its political action committees (PACs) — organisations that support particular political causes or parties — but major individual donors are walking away too.Dissecting America's opaque political donations system is difficult, because donations are spread across individual donors, lobby groups, PACs and corporations.But the donation drain for Republicans is not immaterial.End Citizens United, a group fighting to re-regulate American's political donations system, estimates corporate PACs alone have donated nearly $US9 million ($12 million) to the eight US senators who refused to certify the results of the 2020 election.Politico has reported the two senior House Republicans who objected to the certification of the Electoral College votes have received more than $US23 million ($30 million) in corporate donations over the length of their careers.But after last week's Capitol insurrection, scores of America's most well-known companies have been publicly distancing themselves from the Republicans who refused to accept the election result, with many saying they are reviewing their approach to political donations all together.Hallmark, the oldest manufacturer of greeting cards in the US, has gone one step further than most companies and demanded refunds from two Republican senators who it said, "do not reflect our company's values".Facebook has banned Mr Trump and associated accounts from its platform, while also pausing all of its PAC donations for at least this financial quarter, while it reviews its donation policy.The aircraft giant Boeing, which US website Popular Information reports donated nearly $30,000 to eight senators in the last year, said it would "carefully evaluate" its future contributions.Finance giants including Amex, Morgan Stanley and Citibank, as well as well known hotel brands, such as Marriott International and Hilton, are also reviewing or pausing their political contributions, as have Ford, ExxonMobil and FedEx.Across the board, dozens of corporations have said they will no longer donate to those 147 Republicans, or they'll pause donations for now, or they'll re-evaluate which candidates will receive future support. Brynn O'Brien, the executive director at the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR), said the social pressure that miscreant Republicans are experiencing, via the corporate donations situation, would soon hit the boardrooms of publicly-listed companies.She said if board members of publicly-listed companies in the US have shown public support for Mr Trump's anti-democratic behaviour in recent years, they will soon be facing pressure too."There are going to be Trump-supporting company directors on the chopping block in the next proxy season in the US," Ms O'Brien told the ABC.The US "proxy season" occurs between mid-April and mid-June. It's when large publicly listed companies hold their annual general meetings."I got off a call last night with some American colleagues and they are looking at the Twitter feeds, even the Parler accounts, of prominent company directors," she said."Individual supporters of insurrection and white supremacy will no longer be tolerated on company boards — that would be my prediction for the 2021 US proxy season."They're pulling together briefs, sending them to institutional investors and saying to institutional investors, 'what are you going to do with this information? We recommend that you go and have a conversation with that board and seek the voluntary resignation of these people, because these people are not fit to be leaders in corporate America.'"Ms O'Brien said she doubted the pause on political donations in the US over the last week would become permanent, but she did think, for at least some of the elected Republican representatives, the "stain" of recent events would "stick around" beyond the next term of government.She said the same went for corporations and their boards that were not seen to be responding to political events in a way that met their customers' expectations of social responsibility and accountability."Companies are very sensitive to their brand being associated with things that their customers and society at large reject," Ms O'Brien said.She said companies everywhere put "material value" on their social licence to operate in different countries, and Australia had its own recent examples."Companies are under increasing pressure to distance themselves from the worst acts," she said."We've seen that across Australia with Rio Tinto's destruction of Juukan Gorge."We're seeing it increasingly in the fossil fuel sector, we're even seeing campaigns popping up, calling on sporting events not accepting donations from fossil fuel companies."The bounds of social acceptability are changing, but we have had an example in the US of something that was totally outside what the reasonable consumer in a pretty non-partisan sense would consider acceptable — and that was a violent insurrectionist white supremacist coup."Dr Jacqueline Boaks, who lectures in ethics and leadership at the Curtin University School of Management, said it would take time for America to heal from the events of January 6.She said the US's corporate leaders had a responsibility to help guide the nation, and that went beyond reviewing their political donations and de-platforming problematic personalities from social media.Dr Boaks said from one perspective, social media companies had a responsibility to their shareholders, which included banning controversial personalities who were negatively affecting their share price, but from another perspective, businesses had a responsibility to do what was ethically required for society at large."That might mean if someone is inciting insurrection, or causing possible serious harm, then they are obliged to do something to prevent it," she said."In the case of social media, it is not even really clear where the lines are around social responsibility. Are they responsible for what people might say on their platforms and cause to happen?"It seems like a really open question."When it comes to political donations, Dr Boaks said the public's willingness to maintain pressure on companies over a long period of time would determine whether or not those companies would maintain their decisions not to donate to Republicans who refused to accept the results of the 2020 election."There is really no substitute for a really critically engaged populace to hold companies to account," she said."To avoid [political] greenwashing, you still need a critical public to determine if companies are actually going far enough, doing enough to be ethical, or just doing the equivalent of putting a fancy logo on their product?"("Greenwashing" is when an organisation spends more time marketing itself as being environmentally friendly than it does on reducing its environmental impact). In recent years, Australian corporations and media companies have faced similar pressures from activists and consumers, demanding businesses hold themselves to a higher standard.Sleeping Giants Oz, the Australian arm of an international network of online activists, has run consumer boycott campaigns against commercial media outlets, including News Corp and Sydney radio 2GB, for promoting far-right activists and broadcasting polarising opinions.Former 2GB breakfast radio host Alan Jones was a regular target, and in 2019, Macquarie Radio lost hundreds of advertisers, after Mr Jones suggested Prime Minister Scott Morrison "shove a sock down [Jacinda Ardern's] throat." (Although social media activist organisation Mad F***ing Witches, founded by Jennie Hill, was the driver of that particular campaign against Mr Jones).In 2018, following a Sleeping Giants Oz campaign, News Corp's Sky News lost advertisers after airing an interview with far-right nationalist Blair Cottrell.Sleeping Giants used social media to let the public know about the interview and in the aftermath, companies including Huggies, TerryWhite Chemmart, and the healthcare company GSK Australia, disassociated themselves from the network.The public outcry following Rio Tinto's destruction of Juukan Gorge led to a parliamentary inquiry into Australia's natural heritage and how it was being treated, as well as put pressure on the West Australian government to legislate protections for sacred Indigenous sites.It saw Rio's chief executive lose his job, in one of the biggest Australian reckonings for a major mining company for breaking the social contract.During the banking royal commission, senior executives at some of Australia's biggest banks were forced out the door after appalling customer treatment was made public through the hearings.But when it comes to systemic change, the difference between a PR stunt and genuine cultural repair depends on whether or not the change becomes permanent. Former Republican National Committee executive director, Mike DuHaime, told Politico he believed the decision by scores of Republicans to refuse to accept the election results served as a "line in the sand" and felt "like a breaking point" for many corporate and individual donors."But this only matters if it holds for the entirety of the cycle," he said."If it's only a pause, it won't matter."Ms O'Brien said the political shift in power in the United States, which saw the Democrats win control of both US houses of congress and the presidency, along with the de-platforming of powerful voices like Mr Trump's, had created space for companies to review their donations without fear of political retribution."It wouldn't have been the decisive factor, the companies were probably already thinking about it, but it created the political space," Ms O'Brien said."And that's how a trickle became a tide of companies saying we are not going to spend money in this way."(Source: US news website Popular Information)15 Jan 202115 Jan 2021Fri 15 Jan 2021 at 7:38pm, 16 Jan 202116 Jan 2021Sat 16 Jan 2021 at 2:41amMore on:

Corporate donors flee Republican Party following Capitol Hill riot, and it's only the beginningShareDisney has had enough.So has Coca-Cola, Walmart, Hallmark, Amazon, Airbnb and Mastercard.After last week's violent riot on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, which left five people dead, dozens of the world's biggest corporations are pulling their political donations from America's Republicans.The companies — many consistent Republican donors in the past — are targeting the 147 Republicans who still challenged the results of America's presidential election after the Capitol building was stormed...

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Corporate donors flee Republican Party following Capitol Hill riot, and it's only the beginning - ABC News

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