Mitch McConnell Is Horrified that Corporations Are Speaking Out Against Voter Suppression

Donald Trump continued his longstanding tradition of bizarre holiday greetings over the weekend, wishing his supporters a “Happy Easter” while urging them to boycott Major League Baseball, Delta Airlines, and other businesses that took stands against the voter suppression laws Georgia Republicans rammed through last month based on his election fraud lies. “Don’t go back to their products until they relent,” the former president said in a rambling statement Saturday decrying “WOKE CANCEL CULTURE.” “We can play the game better than them.”

It was, like his other post-presidency statements, more embarrassing than truly threatening, and one is loath to give it any oxygen. But it is also, one suspects, precisely the kind of thing these companies were worried about when they were slow to condemn Georgia’s disenfranchisement campaign in the first place. Governor Brian Kemp in March signed a package of draconian voting restrictions passed by the GOP-led legislature in the state, which was at the center of Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden. Georgia-based companies like Delta and Coca-Cola initially tried to stay on the sidelines, even as they faced calls to condemn the anti-democratic laws. But within days, as pressure mounted and powerful Black executives demanded action, they caved in: Delta CEO Ed Bastian and Coke CEO James Quincey each called Georgia’s anti-voting law “unacceptable,” and the MLB pulled its All-Star Game from Atlanta: “Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “Fair access to voting continues to have our game’s unwavering support.”

The moves from Delta, Coke, and the MLB, which recalled the business community’s condemnations of the January 6 attack on the Capitol and those who instigated it, were followed by several other companies coming forward to oppose other disenfranchisement efforts moving through state legislatures—and met with praise from voting rights advocates. “It’s going to take a national response by corporations to stop what happened in Georgia from happening in other states,” Stacey Abrams told the New York Times on Monday. But it also triggered an aggrieved response from the GOP, which has so far seemed to see the corporate condemnations less as a deterrent and more as a challenge.

In addition to the pissy statement from Trump, there was also Kemp invoking “cancel culture” in an attack on the MLB and Marco Rubio blasting Coke and Delta as “woke corporate hypocrites,” and Georgia Republicans retaliating against Delta by voting to cut off a tax break to the company. “You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand,” Georgia House Speaker David Ralston said. The GOP has, of course, been far too friendly to the corporate world, but it is now making clear that its generosity comes with strings attached: If you want the gravy train to keep chugging along, you’d better fall in line. “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned on Monday.

There’s nothing but vindictiveness behind the GOP threats, but they could nevertheless prove compelling for corporations that have long enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the Republican party. Companies may be aghast at conservatives’ attacks on democracy—or at least worried enough about the reputation of their brands to distance themselves from insurrectionist lawmakers—but whether they remain resolved as the news cycle moves on is an open question. Already some of the business community that ran from politics after the pro-Trump riot January 6 have quietly come crawling back or are expected to do so soon. It’s laudable that companies have taken stands against Georgia’s restrictive voting laws. But the real test will be if they continue to do so, even as Trump and his allies rally against them. “Corporations,” NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund President Sherrilyn Ifill told the Times, “have to figure out who they are in this moment.”