After 147 Republican lawmakers voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, major corporations like Amazon and Google pledged to stop donating to election objectors or stop political giving altogether. New reporting from Politico finds that many of these companies technically kept their promises – because they dispatched their lobbyists to make donations for them instead.
Lobbyists for Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta (formerly known as Facebook), Allstate, Toyota, Nike, Dow Chemical Company, and more publicly announced that they would stop donating to election objectors or that they would review their donation policies after some Republican lawmakers voted not to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, following months of former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the election had been stolen from him.
But since corporations benefit greatly from giving to politicians who in turn back policies like keeping corporate taxes low, they used their lobbyists to get around these pledges; individual lobbyists can make personal donations on behalf of companies without being officially affiliated with the companies in campaign filings.
Overall, staff from at least 13 companies with donation pledges gave to election objectors in 2021, Politico found, totalling over $28,000.
Some of the Republicans who received those donations are set to take on leadership positions if their party takes back the House in the midterm elections this year, meaning that the donations could end up playing a role in shaping legislation that will be considered in Congress over the next few years.
According to Politico’s analysis, lobbyists for Microsoft gave the most among major tech companies; corporate vice president of U.S. government affairs Fred Humphries gave $2,500 to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) and $1,000 to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Microsoft Congressional Affairs director Allison Halataei, meanwhile, gave $1,000 to Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah).
In spite of those donations – or perhaps because they thought the donations would ultimately fly under the radar – Microsoft reiterated its pledge to stop all political donations in 2022.
Overall, lobbyists for tech companies gave over $16,000 in donations to 11 different Republicans, Politico found, even as they stuck by their pledges in the public eye.
“It clearly is a workaround,” government ethics expert for Public Citizen Craig Holman told Politico. “If a company is serious about not giving a campaign contribution to insurrectionists, then they can’t allow people who are in senior executive positions who represent the company to make those same contributions. And that would include the CEO as well as the lobbyists of the company.”
While it appears that some companies are trying to conceal donations to election objectors, many others broke their pledges outright last year. Companies including General Motors, Lockheed Martin, UPS, Duke Energy, and more broke their pledges and gave thousands to objectors. Some of these broken pledges are especially egregious – Toyota, for instance, gave $55,000 in the first seven months of 2021 alone.
Popular Information has reported that company pledges against political donations have been largely successful – corporate PAC donations to election objectors are down about 60 percent in comparison to the last election cycle.
However, many companies may have simply shifted their donations onto lobbyists, meaning that it’s difficult to know exactly how these pledges have changed the donation landscape – and it’s possible that they’ve even pushed an already opaque election finance system even further into the dark.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy