April 12, 2021

Wait, Mitch told them to jump and they didn't say, "How high?" This is encouraging, as 100+ corporate leaders call into a Zoom discussion about the controversial state voting bills being pushed in Republican-controlled states, including the one in Georgia that was recently passed. Via the Washington Post:

Executives from major airlines, retailers and manufacturers — plus at least one NFL owner — talked about potential ways to show they opposed the legislation, including by halting donations to politicians who support the bills and even delaying investments in states that pass the restrictive measures, according to four people who were on the call, including one of the organizers, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor.

While no final steps were agreed upon, the meeting represents an aggressive dialing up of corporate America’s stand against controversial voting measures nationwide, a sign that their opposition to the laws didn’t end with the fight against the Georgia legislation passed in March.

[...] The discussion — scheduled to last one hour but going 10 minutes longer — was led at times by Kenneth Chenault, the former chief executive of American Express, and Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck, who told the executives that it was important to keep fighting what they viewed as discriminatory laws on voting. Chenault and Frazier coordinated a letter signed last month by 72 Black business executives that made a similar point — a letter that first drew attention to the voting bills in executive suites across the country.

Democracy has at least a fighting chance with corporate power working against these voter suppression bills. It won't have the clout it once did, since the Republican party is throwing in its lot with Trumpian culture wars, but it will help. After all, Mitch McConnell wouldn't have been so worried if it didn't matter.

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