Over 100 top corporate leaders convened in a "first-of-its-kind" virtual meeting to plan a concerted response to the Republican-backed voting rights restrictions that have swept the nation. The move comes amid a fissure between the GOP and Corporate America following the latter's denunciation of HB 202, a sweeping anti-voting bill passed by the Georgia state legislature late last month. When the MLB pulled its All-Star game from Atlanta in protest of the newly-minted law, many GOP Senators accused corporate America of falling into the hands of the "radical leftists." Last month, when 100 major corporations signaled their opposition to HB 202, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whose PAC received some $475 million from corporate donors last year alone, told Corporate America to "stay out of politics." "Our private sector must stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex," McConnell said. "Americans do not need or want big business to amplify disinformation or react to every manufactured controversy with frantic left-wing signaling. Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order."
During the call, executives from "major airlines, retailers and manufacturers — plus at least one NFL owner" reportedly floated the idea of halting all political contributions to lawmakers that backed any bills designed to suppress the vote, according to Axios. Even more, corporate leaders reportedly discussed discontinuing any investments in states which passed such bills. Among those who attended the meeting were "Arthur Blank, owner of the NFL's Atlanta Falcons; Adam Aron, CEO of AMC Theatres; Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Investments; Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart; Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn; Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines; Doug Parker, CEO of American Airlines; and Chip Bergh, chairman of Levi Strauss Company, according to CBS. "The gathering was an enthusiastic voluntary statement of defiance against threats of reprisals for exercising their patriotic voices," Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale University management professor who helped organize the meeting, told CBS. "They're showing a disdain for these political attacks. Not only are they fortifying each other, but they see that this spreading of disease of voter restrictions from Georgia to up to possibly 46 other states is based on a false premise and its' anti-democratic."
