Now that major businesses including Georgia-based firms are announcing opposition to Georgia Republican’s voter suppression act, state elected Republicans feel all betrayed and retaliatory.
The chief executives of two of Georgia’s biggest corporations sharply criticized the state’s voting restrictions, reversing weeks of milder statements about the new election law pushed through the Legislature by Republican lawmakers.
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said in a memo to employees Wednesday that the law was “unacceptable” and “based on a lie” of widespread fraud in last November’s election. Hours later, Coca-Cola’s CEO also pronounced the measure “unacceptable.”
The statements came as Georgia companies faced growing threats of boycotts from voting rights advocates who say local corporations should have done more to oppose the legislation before it was signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp last week. Tens of thousands of social media postscarrying the hashtags #BoycottDelta, #BoycottDeltaAirlines and #BoycottCocaCola proliferated on Twitter in recent days.
The CEOs’ comments triggered threats of backlash from Republican legislators who embraced the contentious election overhaul as a necessary measure to restore confidence.
More than 70 top Black executives from across the U.S. called on corporate America to publicly oppose any legislation limiting Americans’ right to vote. In a full-page ad placed in The New York Times, Merck & Co. CEO Kenneth Frazier, former American Express CEO Ken Chenault and the other executives described the Georgia law and measures being contemplated in other states as “undemocratic and un-American, and they are wrong.”
It seemed for a while that Republicans meant to show private business who’s the overseer in Georgia:
“They like our public policy when we’re doing things that benefit them,” said House Speaker David Ralston, adding: “You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand. You got to keep that in mind sometimes.”
But that was all bluster. The Georgia Senate adjourned without acting on the House-passed retribution.
The backlash was only a matter of time:
Stacey Abrams is not ready to call for a boycott but not opposed to one either:
Boycotts work. The focused power of No, trained on corporate actors used to being told Yes, can yield transformative results. As a Black person, a Southerner, an American, I respect and defend the right to boycott — and the advancement of civil rights has relied heavily on economic boycotts. Indeed, the very threat of such a call to action by Georgia’s faith leaders spurred the hasty adoption and cloistered signing of our state’s new restrictive voting law.
[…]
However, one lesson of boycotts is that the pain of deprivation must be shared to be sustainable. Otherwise, those least resilient bear the brunt of these actions; and in the aftermath, they struggle to access the victory. And boycotts are complicated affairs that require a long-term commitment to action. I have no doubt that voters of color, particularly Black voters, are willing to endure the hardships of boycotts. But I don’t think that’s necessary — yet.
It did not take long for North Carolina Republicans to feel the economic heat after passge of their infamous (and imitated) bathroom bill. Georgia Republicans were too Trumped-up to heed that lesson.
North Carolina Republicans are so Trumped-up that they have already forgotten the lesson that cost them the governor’s mansion in 2016. The NC GOP has introduced a bill with the same name as Georgia’s. Sometimes them dogs is slow to learn:
At only five pages, Senate Bill 326 is less onerous than its Georgia counterpart. But there is likely a committee substitute in some legislator’s drawer with more draconian features crafted on the Georgia model. The 2013 voter ID bill jumped overnight from 17 to over 50 pages in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder.
Do they feel lucky?