Several of the major corporations that pulled funding from Republicans who supported former President Donald Trump’s efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election have quietly restored those ties, according to The Hill.
In total, companies and trade groups have donated more than $8 million to GOP objectors’ reelection campaigns. Companies that specifically vowed to pull funding from those Republicans – Boeing, General Motors, Raytheon Technologies, Altria Group, and UPS – have since given $2.4 million to their campaigns and PACs, according to the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Most of those donations are going to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., a contender for the House speakership if Republicans take back Congress in 2022, and other Republicans who are expected to take control of key congressional committees in November.
The only companies that have stayed committed to their pledge to freeze donations to Republican objectors include Comcoast, Walmart, Microsoft, Google, and AT&T. But a few of them are starting to reconsider that decision, given Republicans’ strong chances to sweep the midterms in 2022.
“We know the precedent. We see the retirements. We see the same polls everyone else does,” a lobbyist at a Fortune 500 company that is currently pausing PAC donations to GOP objectors said. “Our strategy needs to align with the current political reality that Republicans are almost certainly taking the House in November.”
One of the Republicans most affected by the Jan. 6 controversy was Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. He refused to certify the 2020 election’s results, and was cut off from several major donors as a result.
“If these corporations don’t want conservatives to speak, they should just be honest about it,” he said at the time. “But to equate leading a debate on the floor of the Senate with inciting violence is a lie, and it’s dangerous.
“I will not be deterred from representing my constituents,” he said, “and I will not bow to left-wing corporate pressure.”
