Following the January 6 attack on the U.S. Congress in Washington, attention turned to corporate political support for the 147 members who voted to overturn the November election results and the 43 senators who voted to acquit President Trump in his second impeachment trial. Dozens of companies announced they would “pause” PAC spending and critics of political spending saw an opportunity to tighten the corporate purse strings. But spending immediately following a general election always drops, and it remains far from clear if the spigots will remain off, with a tight Democratic majority in Congress and contentious policymaking ahead.

Companies spend to influence elections in many ways, and little attention is paid to spending in the states. Corporate money, from PACs and directly from the treasury, has been supporting an increasingly partisan set of state lawmakers. Many of these politicians implicity – and often explicity – support the radical set of political ideas that culminated in the Capitol attack.

Si2 found in an examination of Fortune 250 spending during the 2020 election cycle that 80 percent of corporate-connected candidate contributions in the South went to Republicans, for instance, even though nationally expenditures were more bipartisan. (The Si2 study examined corporate support for political entities opposed to reproductive health rights, but there is a nearly perfect correlation between opposition to these rights and Republian party affiliation.)

Companies disproportionately support political organizations such as the Republican Governor’s Association, the Republican State Leadership Committee, and the Republican Attorneys General Association. These groups, in turn, groom Republican state candidates and support their campaigns.  

Super PAC spending – which in the wake of Citizens United has no limits – from the Fortune 250 companies Si2 examined came from just a handful of energy companies, Boeing, and Altria.  It went entirely to the Senate Leadership Fund and the Congressional Leadership Fund, which worked to elect federal Republicans. Almost all of it bought attack ads aimed at Democrats in key races, including the Georgia races that produced the new knife’s edge Democratic Senate majority.

The Si2 study presents another example of unexamined state level spending in the Utah Attorney General’s race. Thirteen-year incumbent Republican Sean Reyes received support from Amazon.com, Home Depot, Altria, and Coca-Cola. Reyes is an ardent opponent of abortion, tried unsuccessfully in 2014 to defend Utah’s outlawed ban on same-sex marriage, sought to block transgender job rights in 2016 and in December 2020 signed on with other AGs to the failed lawsuit seeking to nullify the 2020 presidential election results. (Such incongruencies between corporate policies and practicies are raised in several of this year’s shareholder resolutions.)

As companies re-think how they spend in the wake of the January 6 attack, they may well decide to reconsider which politicians and causes to support. The reputational stakes are now higher, and the return on political spending may become more elusive.

Heidi Welsh
Executive Director, Sustainable Investments Institute (Si2)