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The risks of corporate political spending after the Jan. 6 insurrection | Column – Tampa Bay Times

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Ever since the 2010 Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC, corporations have had the ability to spend money in politics. Now after the Jan. 6 insurrection, many corporate political spenders are feeling the sting of getting into bed with the wrong politicians. These corporations are learning something that I have been writing about for years — dabbling in politics comes with huge reputational risks.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy [ File photo ]

This year is not the first time that electoral votes have had congressional objections. Back in 2004, there were limited objections to Ohio’s electoral college votes. In 2004 the objection was from Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and California Sen. Barbara Boxer. Rep. Tubbs Jones was joined by several members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who raised the objection to draw attention to the long lines and other voting difficulties experienced by Black voters in Ohio. The objection was resolved after a few hours. A big difference from 2021 was that the 2004 objection was not accompanied by violence in the halls of Congress.

The Capitol riot presents unique risks for corporate financial supporters for members of Congress who backed President Donald Trump’s position on Jan. 6.

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Independent journalist Judd Legum’s Popular Information was the first to ask corporate PACs whether they would continue their financial support for members of Congress who objected in 2021 to the Electoral College votes in swing states on Jan. 6. In 2021 multiple swing states were subject to objections (instead of just one state), and this time more than a hundred House Republicans and a dozen Republican senators originally objected. This meant corporate donors to far more members of Congress were under scrutiny for supporting what some are now calling the sedition caucus.

Popular Information broke the news on Jan. 11 that three major corporations — Marriott, BlueCross BlueShield and Commerce Bank — suspended PAC donations to the 147 Republicans who objected to the Electoral College vote. A day later they reported that dozens of corporations would also suspend political support.

A month after the insurrection, the New York Times Deal Book highlighted that Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, BlackRock, Coca-Cola and Hilton all paused donations to the 147 objecting Republicans in Congress including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

A new survey by the Conference Board provides a new data both on how broadly corporations have pulled back from on political spending. The survey of 84 companies found that “about 28 percent of companies have announced their PAC’s actions both internally and externally, while another 25 percent have announced their PAC’s decision but only internally.” This indicates the firms that have been captured by Popular Information and the New York Times likely understates how many corporations have changed their political spending behavior since the changes haven’t all been public. Moreover, the Conference Board survey indicated that “concerns about company reputation was a key factor (nearly 45 percent) in driving the organization’s response (to Jan. 6).”

As I explained in my book Political Brands and in a law review article entitled “Shooting Your Brand in the Foot,” corporate political spending comes with many reputational risks including associating a well-crafted corporate brand with a toxic politician. If a politician that a corporation has supported gets into an embarrassing scandal or legal trouble, the corporation can be harmed through guilt by association. This can lead to boycotts and other shunning.

Also if the political spending is being done transparently through a corporate PAC, then there’s another lesson to hard learn: Records of political spending online last forever. Even if firms stop giving to Sens. Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz today, all their past political support is easy to find on sources like www.followthemoney.org or www.opensecrets.org. For forever and a day, the public, including a firm’s shareholders and customers, can find which corporate PACs supported Donald Trump or his congressional enablers.

Investigations into the Jan. 6 events are on-going. The FBI continues to arrest individuals who participated in the riot from the outside. New reporting notes that the Capitol Police are investing 35 officers of their own organization for their actions that day. Then there is a police investigation. about exactly which members of Congress may have given tours of the Capitol on Jan. 5 to aid and abet the future rioters. So what is now a political nightmare could get even worse if any members of Congress that were supported by a corporation gets into criminal trouble too related to the insurrection. The downside for the donor corporations can be enormous and long lasting.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is a professor of law at Stetson University College of Law, a Brennan Center Fellow and the author of “Political Brands.”

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Opinion: Canada's foreign policy and its domestic politics on Israel's war against Hamas are shifting – The Globe and Mail

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The vote in the House of Commons last week on Israel’s war against Hamas represents a shift in both Canada’s foreign policy and its domestic politics.

The Liberal government is now markedly more supportive of the rights of Palestinians and less supportive of the state of Israel than in the past. That shift mirrors changing demographics, and the increasing importance of Muslim voters within the Liberal coalition.

Both the Liberal and Conservative parties once voiced unqualified support for Israel’s right to defend itself from hostile neighbours. But the Muslim community is growing in Canada. Today it represents 5 per cent of the population, compared with 1 per cent who identify as Jewish.

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Although data is sparse prior to 2015, it is believed that Muslim Canadians tended to prefer the Liberal Party over the Conservative Party. They were also less likely to vote than the general population.

But the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper deeply angered the community with talk about “barbaric cultural practices” and musing during the 2015 election campaign about banning public servants from wearing the niqab. Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was promising to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada if elected.

These factors galvanized community groups to encourage Muslims to vote. And they did. According to an Environics poll, 79 per cent of eligible Muslims cast a ballot in the 2015 election, compared with an overall turnout of 68 per cent. Sixty-five per cent of Muslim voters cast ballots for the Liberal Party, compared with 10 per cent who voted for the NDP and just 2 per cent for the Conservatives. (Telephone interviews of 600 adults across Canada who self-identified as Muslim, were conducted between Nov. 19, 2015 and Jan. 23, 2016, with an expected margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points 19 times out of 20.)

Muslim Canadians also strongly supported the Liberals in the elections of 2019 and 2021. The party is understandably anxious not to lose that support. I’m told that Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly often mentions the large Muslim community in her Montreal riding. (According to the 2021 census, 18 per cent of the people in Ahuntsic-Cartierville identify as Muslim.)

This is one reason why the Liberal leadership laboured so mightily to find a way to support last week’s NDP motion that would, among other measures, have recognized the state of Palestine. The Liberal caucus was deeply divided on the issue. My colleague Marieke Walsh reports that dozens of Liberal MPs were prepared to vote for the NDP motion.

In the end, almost all Liberal MPs ended up voting for a watered-down version of the motion – statehood recognition was taken off the table – while three Liberal MPs voted against it. One of them, Anthony Housefather, is considering whether to remain inside the Liberal caucus.

This is not simply a question of political calculation. Many Canadians are deeply concerned over the sufferings of the people in Gaza as the Israel Defence Forces seek to root out Hamas fighters.

The Conservatives enjoy the moral clarity of their unreserved support for the state of Israel in this conflict. The NDP place greater emphasis on supporting the rights of Palestinians.

The Liberals have tried to keep both Jewish and Muslim constituencies onside. But as last week’s vote suggests, they increasingly accord a high priority to the rights of Palestinians and to the Muslim community in Canada.

As with other religious communities, Muslims are hardly monolithic. Someone who comes to Canada from Senegal may have different values and priorities than a Canadian who comes from Syria or Pakistan or Indonesia.

And the plight of Palestinians in Gaza may not be the only issue influencing Muslims, who struggle with inflation, interest rates and housing affordability as much as other voters.

Many new Canadians come from societies that are socially conservative. Some Muslim voters may be uncomfortable with the Liberal Party’s strong support for the rights of LGBTQ Canadians.

Finally, Muslim voters for whom supporting the rights of Palestinians is the ballot question may be drawn more to the NDP than the Liberals.

Regardless, the days of Liberal/Conservative bipartisan consensus in support of Israel are over. This is the new lay of the land.

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Recall Gondek group planned to launch its own petition before political novice did – CBC.ca

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The third-party group helping promote the recall campaign against Mayor Jyoti Gondek had devised plans to launch its own petition drive, as part of a broader mission to make Calgary council more conservative.

Project YYC had planned with other conservative political organizations to gather signatures demanding Calgary’s mayor be removed, says group leader Roy Beyer. But their drive would have begun later in the year, when nicer weather made for easier canvassing for supporters, he said.

Those efforts were stymied when Landon Johnston, an HVAC contractor largely unknown in local politics, applied at city hall to launch his own recall drive in early February. Since provincial recall laws allow only one recall attempt per politician per term, Project YYC chose to lend support to Johnston’s bid.

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“Now we have to try to do door-knocking in the winter, and there’s a lot of preparation that you have to contemplate prior to starting. And Landon didn’t do that,” Beyer told CBC News in an interview.

Project YYC has helped gather signatures, created a website and erected large, anti-Gondek signs around town. It has supplied organizational heft that Johnston admits to lacking.

Their task is daunting.

According to provincial law, in order to force a recall plebiscite to oust the mayor before the term is up, they have two months to gather more than 514,000 signatures, an amount equal to 40 per cent of Calgary’s population in 2019.

They have until April 4 to collect that many signatures, and by March 21 had only 42,000.

Beyer criticizes the victory threshold for recall petition as so high that it’s “a joke,” and the province may as well not have politician recall laws.

So if he thinks it’s an impossible pursuit, why is he involved with this?

“You can send a message to the mayor that she should be sitting down and resigning … without achieving those numbers,” Beyer said.

Project YYC founder Roy Beyer, from a Take Back Alberta video in 2022. He is no longer with that provincial activist group. (royjbeyer screenshot/Rumble)

He likened it to former premier Jason Kenney getting 52 per cent support in a UCP leadership review — enough to technically continue as leader, but a lousy enough show of confidence that he announced immediately he would step down.

Gondek has given no indication she’ll voluntarily leave before her term is up next year. But she did emerge from a meeting last week with Johnston to admit the petition has resonated with many Calgarians and is a signal she must work harder to listen to public concerns and explain council’s decisions.

The mayor also told the Calgary Sun this week that she’s undecided about running for re-election in 2025. 

“There used to be this thing where if you’re the mayor, of course you’re going to run for another term because there’s unfinished business,” Gondek told the newspaper.

“And yes, there will be unfinished business, but the times are not what they were. You need to make sure you’re the right leader for the times you’re in.”

The last several Calgary mayors have enjoyed multiple terms in office, going back to Ralph Klein in the 1980s. The last one-term mayor was Ross Alger, the man Klein defeated in 1980.

Beyer and fellow conservative organizers launched Project YYC before the recall campaign. The goal was to elect a conservative mayor and councillors — “a common-sense city council, instead of what we currently have,” he said.

Beyer is one of a few former activists with the provincial pressure group Take Back Alberta to have latched themselves to the recall bid and Project YYC, along with some United Conservative Party riding officials in Calgary. 

Beyer’s acknowledgment of his group’s broader mission comes as Premier Danielle Smith and her cabinet ministers have said they want to introduce political party politics in large municipalities — even though most civic politicians have said they don’t want to bring clear partisanship into city halls.

Although Beyer admits Project YYC’s own recall campaign would have been a coalition effort with other conservative groups, he wouldn’t specify which ones. He did insist that Take Back Alberta wasn’t one of them.

A man in a grey baseball cap speaks to reporters.
Calgary business owner Landon Johnston speaks to reporters at City Hall on March 22 following his 15-minute conversation with Mayor Jyoti Gondek. (Laurence Taschereau/CBC)

Johnston says he was approached by Beyer’s group shortly after applying to recall Gondek, and gave them $3,000 from donations he’d raised.

He initially denied any knowledge of Project YYC when documents first emerged about that group’s role in the recall, but later said he didn’t initially realize that was the organizational name of his campaign allies.

“They said they could get me signatures, so I said, ‘OK, if you can do it by the book, here’s some money.’ And it’s worked,” he said.

Johnston has said he’s new to politics but simply wants to remove Gondek because of policies he’s disagreed with, like the soon-to-be-ended ban on single-use plastics and bags at restaurant takeouts and drive-thrus.

He’s no steadfast conservative, either. He told CBC’s Calgary Eyeopener that he voted for Rachel Notley’s NDP because one of its green-renovation incentives helped his HVAC business.

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump – CNN

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David shares how he feels about former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Watch the full episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” streaming March 29 on Max.


03:21

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