Meet the Corporate Donors Behind the GOP’s Extremists

Here at The Border Chronicle, we are participating in Democracy Day, a nationwide effort by journalists to highlight growing threats to our democracy. Border communities, perhaps more than any other, have suffered from authoritarian, anti-democratic attacks, as our readers know.

Today’s article about Arizona is the second in a three-part series on democracy, campaign spending, and the midterm election for the national collaboration, highlighting the International Day of Democracy on September 15. We’ll follow up with a final article next week, that examines the funders behind the great replacement and invasion rhetoric embraced by the GOP in Texas.

As the November midterm election approaches, some of America’s biggest corporations are funding extremist GOP candidates campaigning on white-supremacist talking points and the lie that Democrats stole the 2020 election.

As I wrote last week, more than 546 ads and political messages repeating “great replacement” and “migrant invasion” lies have aired this election cycle, according to the nonprofit America’s Voice. Those ads were paid for with millions from corporate contributors.

This racist message is almost always paired with the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. Both lies undermine democracy and inspire acts of domestic terrorism. It should raise alarms that major U.S. corporations are funding candidates who have embraced this dangerous rhetoric.

In Arizona, a crucial swing state, gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake regularly speaks of the southern border as under “invasion.” She says Democrats have a “demonic agenda” and calls for her Democratic opponent for governor, Katie Hobbs, to be “locked up.” She’s also called for the “punishment” of journalists who report that the 2020 election was won by Joe Biden. Despite her dangerous, authoritarian stance, Lake has received more than $3 million since May from corporations including United HealthCare, DoorDash, and Anthem, a health insurance giant, which counts Blue Cross Blue Shield as a subsidiary.

How does this happen, you might wonder? Public corporations and their trade associations dole out millions in contributions to the Republican Governors Association, a tax-exempt 527 organization, which in turn gets funneled to candidates like Lake. After the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, 527s (named for the section of IRS code that governs them) were allowed to take unlimited corporate contributions, pumping millions of dollars into state elections. Doug Ducey, Arizona’s governor, is co-chair of the RGA.

With the increasing political polarization, domestic terrorism, and the January 6 attack on the Capitol, corporations should be held more accountable for their political contributions, says Bruce Freed, president of the nonprofit Center for Political Accountability, which conducted an extensive analysis on 527s and corporate spending for its 2021 report Conflicted Consequences.

“With the companies that give to the Republican Governors Association, the money goes into a pot, and some of that money can go to a Kari Lake or to another candidate,” says Freed. “And so the companies bear responsibility as to where their money is going.”

Both the Democratic and Republican parties have 527s, but the Republicans regularly outraise and outspend Democrats two to one, Freed says. In the last decade, Republican 527 groups raised more than $1 billion, almost half of that coming from publicly traded corporations and their trade associations. Democratic groups raised $632 million in the last decade.

Many Democrats, in turn, have only tepidly challenged the harmful invasion rhetoric parroted by Republicans. They’ve also received campaign funding from border surveillance and detention companies. But they haven’t called for the death of journalists or their political opponents or lied about the 2020 election.

As mainstream Republicans have increasingly embraced extremist talking points, their corporate donors have assumed a position of risk, says Freed. “Right now, there really aren’t many companies making a concerted effort to know where their money ends up,” he says. “It’s essential that companies know and make public where their money ends up and what it enables. It’s the only way you’ll know whether a company’s political spending is in alignment with its core values and positions.”

One corporate donor to the RGA, for instance, is DoorDash, the San Francisco–based food delivery service, which, according to IRS filings, gave $445,000 to the association this election cycle. The company’s diversity statement states that nearly one-third of its employees are people of color. “At DoorDash, we strive to build diversity, equity, and inclusion into People operations, policies, and programs; therefore, empowering employees with the tools to ensure that underrepresented identities and perspectives are valued and can thrive,” the corporation’s website reads.

I wrote to DoorDash’s head of communications to ask about its political contributions to the RGA and whether it tracks how those funds are used. Will DoorDash’s money go to a candidate like Kari Lake, for instance, whose white-supremacist messaging endangers many of DoorDash’s own employees? I also wrote to health insurance behemoths United HealthCare ($600,000) and Anthem ($500,000) about their political contributions to the RGA. Their responses did not arrive in time for publication. But I’ll relay their responses once I receive them.

While the donations mentioned above are hefty, they are by no means the largest. The top five corporate donors to the RGA in 2022, according to the Center for Political Accountability, are the following: Centene Management ($1.5 million), Altria Client Services ($1 million), Vertex Pharma ($935,000), The GEO Group ($900,000) [one of the nation’s largest immigrant detention and deportation companies], and BNSF Railway ($826,000).

Another powerful conduit for 527 contributions is the Republican Attorney Generals Association (RAGA). The association also oversees the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a 501 (c) (4) dark money group that helped organize Trump’s rally at the Ellipse park before the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol and sent out robocalls urging people to attend.

One recipient of RAGA’s largesse is Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich, who issued a legal opinion in February that the U.S. Constitution allows the state’s governor to invoke “war powers” and send the National Guard to its 370-mile-long border with Mexico to fight an “invasion.”

The fringe legal concept, which many constitutional experts say will never stand up in court, is being pushed nationwide by former members of Trump’s cabinet, including Ken Cuccinelli, former acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Cuccinelli is a research fellow at the Center for Renewing America, an affiliate of the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is run by Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff; Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election; and former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint. The institute is funded in part by Trump’s Save America PAC.

Brnovich received more than $2.5 million from the RAGA for his campaign in 2018. The top five corporate donors to the RAGA, according to the Center for Political Accountability, include Altria Client Services ($2.3 million), Comcast ($1.2 million), Reynolds American ($1.1 million), Wal-Mart ($933,000), and Anthem ($895,000.)

Recent donations to RAGA, according to IRS filings, have also come from Fox News’ parent company, News Corp. ($60,000), as well as NewsMax ($25,000). Both have played a major role in amplifying the invasion and election-denial narratives.

“Groups like RAGA depend on corporate money,” says Freed. After the Citizen’s United ruling, which unleashed corporate spending, Freed’s organization began to track S&P 500 corporations and their political spending. Every year since 2011, they’ve released an annual report ranking these companies for transparency, called the CPI-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure and Accountability.

More and more companies, he says, are becoming aware of the risk of their political spending in a political environment in which candidates are pursuing anti-democratic agendas. “We’re pressing companies to find out where their money ends up,” Freed says. “527s have reshaped and distorted our national and state politics and policy. That’s why they are so significant.”

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