RALEIGH, N.C. – Seven of North Carolina's members of Congress are in Corporate America's financial crosshairs following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
According to the business news website Quartz, more than 30 S&P 500 corporations have suspended donations to members of Congress who voted to object to the election results after the attack. Dozens more have paused donations to any politician, regardless of party affiliation.
When Congress reconvened to certify the Electoral College results the evening of Jan. 6, some Republican lawmakers objected to the certification of results in Arizona. Supporting those objections were Reps. Dan Bishop, Ted Budd, Madison Cawthorn, Richard Hudson and David Rouzer. A subsequent objection to Pennsylvania's results netted support from those same five lawmakers plus Reps. Virginia Foxx and Greg Murphy.
Prof. Mac McCorkle, of Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, said a lack of support from corporate political action committees, or PACs, can pose two problems for candidates. Losing financial support can hobble an effort to fend off a challenger. Moreover, having support from certain companies or organizations is often seen as a stamp of approval by voters trying to make up their minds.
The list of companies targeting election objectors includes technology companies like Comcast and Verizon, food manufacturers like General Mills and Kraft Heinz, financial institutions like Nasdaq and Morgan Stanley, and retail giants including Walgreen's and Wal-Mart. McCorkle said all of these corporations have something in common: they all are consumer-oriented businesses.
“Those corporations are going to be more sensitive to at least the lean of more of a progressive lean because they simply don't want to alienate too many of the new consumers that they want to go, especially many of the non-White consumers that they want to be picking up,” he said.
Still, McCorkle said the impact might be blunted by support from individuals and from so-called super PACs, the entities that arose in the aftermath of the 2010 Citizens United ruling. Federal campaign finance data show corporate PAC contributions from the companies that are now punishing election objectors never amounted to more than 3 percent of each of the North Carolina objectors' campaign contributions during the 2020 election cycle. For some, like Bishop and Cawthorn, contributions from the involved PACs didn't even reach a tenth of one percent.
The long-term implications of this month's corporate contribution decisions are hard to gauge. McCorkle said corporations might decide to step away from political donations entirely. Alternatively, a strongly pro-tax and pro-regulation push by the Biden Administration might cause corporate PAC money to start flowing to Republicans again regardless of how they handled the election objection issue.
Spectrum News 1 contacted each of the North Carolina Republicans who objected to the election results. Rep. Cawthorn's office declined to comment and the others did not respond.