Corporations Kept Bankrolling The Campaign Against Voting Rights
Records show big business funneled millions to GOP groups even after they attempted to limit voting rights and overturn the election.
by WALKER BRAGMAN, ANDREW PEREZ
Major corporations won praise in the weeks after the January 6 Capital riot by expressing support for voting rights and promising to suspend their political action committee donations to Republican lawmakers who had tried to overturn the election. Corporate America would be a vanguard in the defense of democracy, some headlines suggested.
Left largely unmentioned: Brand-name corporations and corporate lobbying groups still funneled $15 million last year to two major GOP groups — the Republican Attorneys General Association and the Republican State Legislative Committee — after the organizations and their officials pushed to curtail voting rights and overturn the 2020 election, according to IRS records reviewed by The Daily Poster.
Meanwhile, many major companies continue to support the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — even as the powerful lobby group has been leading the fight against federal legislation protecting voting rights.
RAGA Rakes In Cash
In November 2020, the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) backed a Supreme Court amicus brief requesting that the high court prevent Pennsylvania election officials from counting mail-in ballots postmarked on election day.
The brief alleged that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had opened the door for “unscrupulous actors” to “attempt to influence a close Presidential election in Pennsylvania and elsewhere” by granting a three-day extension for ballot counting because of problems with the COVID-19 pandemic and U.S. Postal Service delays.
A month later, Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton brought suit to withhold the certified vote count from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin ahead of the Electoral College vote on December 14 on the grounds that the states had violated the Constitution when they changed their election rules to make accommodations for COVID.
Supporting Paxton’s lawsuit were the Republican attorneys general from 17 states — Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia. The group filed an amicus brief in the case. All but one of RAGA’s executive committee members at the time — Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr — were represented among the signatories.
Amid those brazen attempts to overturn the national election, 47 companies and trade associations donated nearly $1.5 million to the Republican Attorneys General in December 2020. Several of the donor companies have subsequently claimed to support voting rights.
For instance, Philadelphia-based international law firm Cozen O’Connor signed the well-publicized “We Stand for Democracy'' letter against voter suppression laws in April. Yet, the firm funneled $50,000 to RAGA weeks after the group tried to convince the Supreme Court to overturn the election in Cozen’s home state of Pennsylvania.
Other signatories to the letter that also gave to RAGA in December were PayPal ($50,000) and Lyft ($25,000).
A number of companies gave to RAGA in the days immediately after it filed the brief. Those include Johnson & Johnson, ($50,000), PepsiCo ($25,000), United States Sugar Corporation ($15,000), and Microsoft ($25,000).
Walmart, which would later decline to sign onto a letter pledging support for democracy and voting access, gave $125,000 to RAGA in late December. Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, meanwhile, gave $15,000 to RAGA in December, only to pledge three weeks later not to give PAC donations to the lawmakers who voted against accepting the Electoral College results
Soon after the money flowed to RAGA, the group helped direct people to the January 6 protest preceding the Capitol insurrection through its dark money arm, the Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF). RLDF appeared on the “March to Save America” website and even made robocalls promoting the protest that eventually resulted in the storming of the U.S. Capitol building.
“The March to Save America is tomorrow in Washington D.C. at the Ellipse in President’s Park between E St. and Constitution Avenue on the south side of the White House, with doors opening at 7:00 a.m.,” the calls stated. “At 1:00 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal. We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections. For more information, visit MarchtoSaveAmerica.com.”
Since then, Republican attorneys general backed by RAGA have continued to try to make voting more difficult. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, for example, urged states with Republican legislatures to tighten their election laws in March.
“There are certain states where we still control legislatures and we still have governors,” Paxton said in an interview with Breitbart. "I would encourage them to work with the legislature in those states and make sure that their laws are tightened up.”
Meanwhile, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has been fighting to uphold restrictive voting laws, claiming to do so in the name of “election integrity.”
“There is a whole menu of options of how people can exercise their right to vote. Nobody is disenfranchising anybody in Arizona,” he said in February. “This litigation is all about, ‘Can we protect the integrity of our ballots?’”
The laws — the first invalidating ballots cast in the wrong precinct; the second banning third-party ballot collection, or “ballot harvesting” — were challenged by the Democratic National Committee, which argued that they had a discriminatory impact on racial minorities that connects to a histroy of discrimination in the state.
In January 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck the laws down on the grounds that they violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership to minority groups.
As the case headed to the Supreme Court, Brnovich dismissed Democratic complaints that the laws would disproportionately impact minority voters, claiming that “they always play the race card.” The case is ongoing.