In The Past Year Nearly 100 Major Corporations Have Reportedly Gone Back On Their Word To Not Donate To The So
Following last years deadly riot at the Capitol, hundreds of corporations publicly stated they would be suspending financial donations to the Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential electiona group of eight senators and 139 House members whove been pejoratively dubbed the Sedition Caucus. One year later, the majority of those companies appear to have violated their pledge in some way, according to journalists and watchdogs tracking their political contributions.
The newsletter Popular Information has been keeping what it calls the since last August, which it updates based on new corporate FEC filings. Of the companies that explicitly vowed to quit donating to those 147 election-objectors, reevaluate their PACs donation criteria, or simply pause donations in the wake of January 6, Popular Information has found that 53% broke their promises.
The Index splits these companies into eight categories, on a spectrum from those that did as theyd pledged, to those that seemingly didnt even try at the other, and several its complicated groups in between.
However, overall the dollar figure of PAC donations to Republican objectors did fall in 2021by almost two-thirds, Popular Information says. Another new survey of about 200 PACs, published in December by the Public Affairs Council, found that 47% had, in fact, reevaluated the criteria they were using for candidate contributions, and that this led to changes in criteria.
Gop Election Objectors Rake In Corporate Cash
The nations biggest companies have steadily ramped up their donations to GOP lawmakers who voted against certifying the 2020 election results, largely ending the giving freeze instituted following the Capitol riot.
Less than a year after the Jan. 6 attack, PACs affiliated with Fortune 500 companies and their trade groups have contributed $6.8 million to the 147 Republicans who objected, according to a new analysis of campaign finance records from liberal watchdog group Accountable.US.
Every major corporation paused PAC giving after the insurrection, prompting such donations to disappear entirely in January and total just $28,000 in February. Those same corporate PACs quietly resumed and later increased their political giving, doling out a total of $2.3 million to GOP election objectors between September and October, the most recent months on record.
Corporate America expressed concern about the state of U.S. democracy after supporters of former President TrumpDonald TrumpArizona GOP asks court to strike down vote-by-mail systemMcCarthy criticizes GOP members who spoke at white nationalist conference: ‘Unacceptable’First jury trial against accused Jan. 6 rioter beginsMORE attempted to overturn the election results. But companies have signaled they dont want to lose influence with the GOP, which is broadly favored to win back control of Congress in next years midterm elections.
How Refunds To Trump Donors Soared In 2020
Refunds are shown as the percentage of money received by each operation to date via WinRed and ActBlue.
Trump
Around March 2020, the pre-filled check box first appeared on Mr. Trumps online donation form.
Total online refunds in 2020, in millions
$122
Around March 2020, the pre-filled check box first appeared on Mr. Trumps online donation form.
Total online refunds in 2020, in millions
$122
Total online refunds in 2020, in millions
$122
Total online refunds in 2020,
in millions
Biden
Note: Donations and refunds to former President Donald J. Trump include those made via WinRed for the following organizations: Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., Trump Victory, Trump Make America Great Again Committee, Save America, and the Republican National Committee. Donations and refunds to President Biden include those made via ActBlue for the following groups: Biden for President, Biden Victory Fund, Biden Action Fund, Biden Fight Fund, and the Democratic National Committee.
Several bank representatives who fielded fraud claims directly from consumers estimated that WinRed cases, at their peak, represented as much as 1 to 3 percent of their workload. An executive for one of the nations larger credit-card issuers confirmed that WinRed at its height accounted for a similar percentage of its formal disputes.
That still amounts to about 200,000 disputed transactions that Mr. Miller said added up to $19.7 million.
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Republican Donations Surge Despite Corporate Boycott After Capitol Riots
By James Oliphant, Jason Lange, , Tim Reid
10 Min Read
– Right after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, dozens of U.S. companies announced they would halt political donations to the 147 Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn Donald Trumps presidential election loss. Two months later, there is little sign that the corporate revolt has done any real damage to Republican fundraising.
If anything, the biggest backers of Trumps false election-fraud narrative – such as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene – have been rewarded with a flood of grassroots donations, more than offsetting the loss of corporate money. And contributions from both small donors and rich individuals looking to fight the Democratic agenda have poured into the partys fundraising apparatus.
The boycotts limited impact underscores the diminishing role of corporate money in U.S. politics. Individual donations of $200 or less have made up a growing share of campaign money in recent years, while the share given by corporate America shrinks. That trend has accelerated with the rise of anti-establishment figures on both the right and left, such as Trump and progressive firebrand Bernie Sanders, a Vermont senator.
Interviews with Republican operatives, big-money donors and fundraisers revealed little apprehension that corporate outrage over the Jan. 6 Capitol riots would damage the partys fundraising for the 2022 congressional elections.
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And All Those That Support Them
February 2, 2021 by William Spivey
Money! Its one of the few things the Republican Party truly cares about. All of their other stated values, small government, the rule of law, and fiscal responsibility have gone out the window the past four years. Now its come to refusing to accept the results of a fair election and continuing the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power that made America different.
Before anyone jumps up to proclaim it unfair to tarnish all Republicans with the same brush, all Republicans still with the party are complicit and enablers of the behavior we saw on January 6th at the U.S. Capitol. The Trump-incited riot was not only predictable it was planned in the open on the Internet. It was stoked on Fox News and called for by the new right-wing media outlets who believe Fox isnt devoted enough to defending a lunatic.
Corporate America has already taken steps toward defunding Republicans and, in some cases, politicians in general. Google, Coca-Cola, and UPS have temporarily ceased all their political giving. Companies explicitly defunding Republicans who refused to certify Joe Bidens election include Marriott, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Best Buy, Amazon, Dell, Dow Chemical, AT& T, Verizon, Commerce Bank, and Comcast. Hallmark singled out Republican Senator Josh Hawley and Senator Roger Marshall , asking them to return donations from their political action committee.
This post was previously published on Medium.
How To Contact The Gop
NANCY HOLLAND
GOP, or Grand Old Party, is another name for the Republican Party. The Republican National Committee raises money for Republican candidates, writes a party platform and holds conventions to choose candidates for president and vice president of the United States every four years. While individual Republican officeholders choose their own positions on the issues, the Republican National Committee establishes positions for the party as a whole. State Republican parties support candidates within their states and exercise specific powers that vary depending on state laws and traditions.
Explore this article
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In 2016, the National Rifle Association spent more than $50 million to back Donald Trump and several Republican Senate candidates, establishing itself as a major force in the election.
At the same time, the organizations finances were deep in the red. After allegedly abusing its nonprofit status for years through lavish spending on executives and vendors, the NRA is now facing a lawsuit from the New York attorney general that aims to dissolve the organization.
Despite those existential threats, the gun group has promised another show of force during the 2020 campaign, and in August made one of its largest ever ad buys with a spot attacking Trumps Democratic rival, Joe Biden.
Using data from ProPublica and the Federal Election Commission, were tracking the NRAs spending as it happens.
How To Quit The Republican Party
Rep. Michael Forbes, R-N.Y., and Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., are quitting the Republican PartyForbes to be a Democrat, Smith to be an independent. Nevertheless, Smith insisted that he should retain membership in the Senates Republican caucus and his chairmanship of the Ethics Committee and two subcommittees. What are the rules for joining or leaving a political party?
For voters and politicians alike, party membership is a surprisingly fuzzy concept in the U.S. political system. Basically, you are what you say you are.
Forbes and Smith nominally switched their affiliations by filing new state voter registration formsthe same ones used by regular citizens. But Forbes form will remain in a lockbox until the first Tuesday after the general election in November . Smiths move awaits rubber-stamping by a panel of state-appointed supervisors who meet every few months to review batches of registration changes.
The only purpose of the party designation on voter registration forms is to determine which partys primary you vote in. Half the states dont even ask for a party affiliation when you register and allow you to choose when you go to vote. And there is technically nothing to prevent someone registered, say, as a Democrat, from running as an independentor even as a Republican.
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Donors Threatened To Shun The Gop After Jan 6 Now Republicans Are Outraising Democrats
One day after rioters ransacked the Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Republican lobbyist Geoff Verhoff sent a searing email to top GOP officials.
Verhoff, a bundler who works at the lobbying firm Akin Gump, wrote on Jan. 7 that he was appalled by President Donald Trump and the rioters, and he was resigning as co-chair of the Republican National Committees finance committee, according to a person with knowledge of the email. He could no longer associate himself with Trump and his movement, he wrote, and he was distressed by what his party had become.
But when Trump spoke to some of the partys top donors last month, at a retreat convened at the Breakers resort in Palm Beach, Fla., by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Verhoff was one of the attendees, according to two people present and a list of attendees obtained by The Washington Post. He has also recently given sizable sums to Republican candidates, including three members of Congress who voted to overturn the results of the election, federal records show. Verhoff and a spokesman for Akin Gump did not respond to requests for comment.
Republicans have also far outpaced their own 2013 and 2017 numbers, when they raised $135 million and $215 million, respectively, in the first nine months of those years.
Many of the companies are trying to thread the needle financially supporting Republicans, but not explicitly supporting ones who voted not to certify.
This Graph Shows Which Political Party Corporate America Loves The Most
President Trump has already started his reelection campaign for 2020 and hes well on his way to raising a lot of money for the effort. Fortunately, candidates are required to publicly disclose campaign contributions to the Federal Election Commission, which in turn makes the data available to the public. This disclosure process includes where the donors work, allowing us to create our new visual.
Zippia, a career advice website, gathered the data from the Federal Election Commission . Zippia analyzed contributions from employees at the 250,000 biggest companies in the country and found well over 30 million donations records from 2007 through 2017. We took the 30 most politically active companies on the Fortune 500 and ranked them in order of their campaign contributions over the last ten years. The bars represent the total contributions given to candidates in each party. We added the total figures and the percentage breakdown for Democrats and Republicans for easy reference. Several fascinating trends immediately jump out from our visual.
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List Of Companies That Have Resumed Donations To Gop Election Objectors
Prominent companies that paused political donations after some Republicans voted to object to the certification of President Joe Biden‘s election have started giving again.
Following the events of January 6 when rioters entered the Capitol and 147 elected Republicans voted against the certification of Electoral College votes, several major companies announced changes in their political donations. This included pauses in spending and statements that the company would not give money to those who had objected to Biden’s win.
However, some of the corporate PACs of high profile companies that paused donations have begun donating to Republican objectors again, either through direct donations to the Republicans’ campaigns committees and leadership PACs or by donating to the National Republican Congressional Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee , which provide support for the objectors.
Those companies, according to reports from the Washington Post, Daily Beast and Bloomberg, include: American Airlines, health insurance firm Cigna, insurance company Aflac, UPS, defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Motors, Ford, JetBlue, and Southern Co. a gas an electric company based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Trump Was Just The Beginning
All told, the Trump and party operation raised $1.2 billion on WinRed, and refunded roughly 10 percent of it.
Whatever blowback it received, WinRed was not deterred. Soon after the November election ended, the two Republican Senate incumbents in Georgia, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, deployed prechecked weekly recurring boxes in advance of their January runoffs.
Predictably, refund rates spiked.
Keith Millhouse, a transportation consultant in California, intended to donate once to Mr. Perdue, with the aim of keeping Republicans in control of the Senate. He wound up a recurring contributor and called the practice repugnant and deceptive.
Im busy like a lot of other people during this Covid era and I just wanted to get in, make a donation, get done and move on to what I needed to do next, he said. I thought I had done that. Then I find out that, you know, Im getting these other charges.
He canceled the repeating charge when he saw the reminder email. But by then WinRed had already processed his second $100 bonus contribution. He figured it was not worth the hassle to protest. Dont try to sucker it out of me, he said.
Now WinRed is exporting the tools it pioneered during the Trump re-election bid across the Republican Party, presaging a new normal for G.O.P. campaigns.
Rachel Shorey contributed reporting and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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Toyota Halts Donations To Republican Election Objectors
Toyota has said it will halt donations to members of the US Congress who voted against certification of President Biden’s election victory.
The Japanese company faced criticism over the contributions after the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.
Toyota donated more than $50,000 to Republicans who tried to block approval of the US President’s win in some states, it emerged last month.
The company had previously defended the payments.
“Toyota is committed to supporting and promoting actions that further our democracy,”Toyota said.
The statement went on to say: “We are actively listening to our stakeholders and, at this time, we have decided to stop contributing to those Members of Congress who contested the certification of certain states in the 2020 election.”
The company also noted that its political action committee equally supported Democrats and Republicans, adding, “in 2021, the vast majority of the contributions went to Democrats and Republicans who supported the certification of the 2020 election.”
The firm did not say how long the halt to its contributions will last.
The decision came after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in June reported that Toyota directly contributed a total of $56,000 to 38 of the 147 Republican lawmakers who voted against President Biden’s electoral certification.
CREW also said it was the most money any one company contributed to lawmakers who opposed certification.
Toyota Will Stop Donating To Republicans Who Objected To Election Certification
WASHINGTON Japanese automaker Toyota announced Thursday it will stop contributing to Republican members of Congress who on Jan. 6 voted against certifying the 2020 election results after a PAC said it would begin running ads criticizing companies for such donations.
Toyota’s decision to donate to those lawmakers after Jan. 6 “troubled some stakeholders,” and for that reason “we have decided to stop contributing to those Members of Congress,” the company said in a statement.
The move came after an announcement by the Lincoln Project, a PAC formed by Republicans to defeat then-President Donald Trump in 2020, that it would target corporations that donated to Republicans who opposed the formalization of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory. An advertisement aimed at Toyota ran on Thursday.
“Toyota made the right choice today,” the Lincoln Project posted on Twitter after Toyota’s reversal.
The Lincoln Project also criticized the cable company Comcast for refusing to air their advertisement and “opting instead to shield corporate advertisers,” the group said in a tweet. Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News. A representative for Comcast did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump and his supporters spent months trying to cast doubt on and overturn the results of the election, culminating in an effort to derail the official counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 when a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol.
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