The CEOs of some of the country’s top companies met virtually over the weekend to coordinate a response to proposed voting restrictions in the Peach State.
The meeting: Following a conference call held over Zoom, the corporate chiefs are vowing to withhold campaign contributions and withdraw investments in Georgia and other states that enact the proposals, Axios reported.
- According to Axios, funding could be pulled from factories, stadiums and other projects.
- Among the meeting’s attendees: former News Corp. board member James Murdoch, Levi Strauss CEO Chip Bergh, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Arthur Blank, the owner of the Atlanta Falcons.
- According to the event’s organizers, a live poll revealed the CEOs “indicated they will re-evaluate donations to candidates supporting bills that restrict voting rights and many would reconsider investments in states which act upon such proposals.”
Context: Following the 2020 presidential election, which sparked calls from Republicans for increased electoral transparency and fraud prevention measures, voting laws have been thrust into a partisan debate.
- A Georgia law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp last month creates various provisions aimed at upholding electoral integrity, including identification requirements and stricter conditions for rejecting absentee ballots.
- Democrats have characterized the law as a racially-tinged effort to suppress votes, with President Joe Biden calling it “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”
- “These reforms have nothing to do with ‘voter suppression’ or ‘Jim Crow,’” Kemp wrote in an op-ed for Fox News last month. “The Election Integrity Act makes it easy to vote by expanding access to the polls and harder to cheat by ensuring the security of the ballot box.”
Woke capital: Conservatives and dissident leftists have criticized corporate America’s purported embrace of progressive orthodoxy and Democratic Party causes.
- Last year, America’s biggest businesses took turns paying obeisance to Black Lives Matter in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
- Over the weekend, multiple reports revealed one of Black Lives Matters’ co-founders spent $3.2 million in the U.S. alone on luxury homes.
