On March 11, Delta Air Lines dedicated a building at its Atlanta headquarters to Andrew Young, the civil rights leader and former mayor. Mr Young spoke during the ceremony about the restrictive suffrage bill that Republicans had hurried through the Georgian legislature. Then, after the speeches, Mr. Young’s daughter, Andrea, herself selected a prominent activist, Delta CEO Ed Bastian.
“I told him how important it is to oppose this law,” she said.
For mr. Bastian, it was an early warning that the issue of voting rights Delta could soon become entangled in another national dispute. Over the past five years, corporations have taken political positions like never before, often in response to the extreme policies of former President Donald J. Trump.
Na mnr. Trump’s unwavering response to white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, Va., In 2017, Merck’s black CEO Ken Frazier resigned from a presidential advisory group, which led dozens of other top executives to distance themselves from the president. . Last year, following the assassination of George Floyd, hundreds of companies expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
But for companies, the dispute over voting rights is different. An issue that both political parties see as a priority is not easily addressed with declarations of solidarity and donations. By taking a stand on voting rights legislation, companies are being pushed into partisan politics and placed against Republicans who are willing to raise taxes and impose complicated regulations on companies that exceed them politically.
It’s a brand new landscape for big business trying to satisfy Democrats focused on social justice, as well as populist Republicans who are suddenly not afraid to sever ties with business. Companies like Delta are caught in the middle and have serious political consequences no matter what they do.
“It was very difficult under President Trump, and the business community hoped it would be a little easier with a change of administration,” said Rich Lesser, CEO of Boston Consulting Group. “But business leaders still face challenges on how to navigate a variety of issues, and the election issue is one of the most sensitive.”
Initially, Delta, Georgia’s largest employer, tried to stay out of the fight for suffrage. But after the law was passed in Georgia, a group of powerful black executives publicly urged large companies to oppose the voting legislation. Hours later, Delta and Coca-Cola suddenly reversed the course and rejected Georgia law. On Friday, Major League Baseball withdrew the All-Star Game from Atlanta in protest, with more than a hundred other companies speaking out in defense of the right to vote.
The reasons for the support suggest that black executives will have an impact in the coming months, as Republican lawmakers in more than 40 states are promoting restrictive voting laws. But already the setback was rapid, with mr. Trump who has called for boycotts of companies that oppose such laws, and lawmakers in Georgia are voting for new taxes on Delta.
“If people feel it was a week of discomfort and uncertainty, then it should be, and it should be,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which urged companies to to get involved. “Corporations need to find out who they are right now.”
Throughout, Delta was the center of the storm. Delta has long played an extraordinary role in Georgia’s business and political life, and since Mr. Bastian became CEO in 2016, he had some thorny political and social issues.
Delta supports LGBTQ rights, and in 2018, after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, Mr. Bastian terminates a partnership with the National Rifle Association. In response, Republican lawmakers in Georgia voted to eliminate a tax cut for Delta, which costs the company $ 50 million.
Still, when 2021 started and Mr. Bastian focusing on recovering his company from the pandemic, an even more biased issue has arisen.
In February, civil rights activists began reaching out to Delta, which was seen as a problematic provision in the early draft of the bill, including a ban on voting on Sunday, calling for the company to use its influence and lobbying muscles to debate the debate. drive.
Delta’s government affairs team shared some of these concerns, but decided to work behind the scenes rather than go public. It was a calculated choice to prevent Republican lawmakers from being upset.
In early March, Delta lobbyists David Ralston, the Republican head of the Georgia House, and government assistants Brian Kemp pushed to remove drastic provisions in the bill.
But although pressure was exerted on Delta to oppose the legislation in public, Bastian’s advisers asked him to remain silent. Instead, the company issued a statement supporting voting rights in general. Other major Atlanta companies, including Coca-Cola, UPS and Home Depot, followed the same text and refrained from criticizing the bill.
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That passive approach angered activists. Mid-March, protesters have a “die inIn Coca-Cola’s museum. Bishop Reginald Jackson, an influential pastor in Atlanta, took to the streets with a bullhorn and called for Coca-Cola. Days later, activists gathered at the Delta terminal at the Atlanta airport and appealed to Mr. Bastian done to use his influence to kill the bill. Mr. However, Bastian did not want to say anything in public.
Two weeks after the day after Delta handed over its building to Mr. Young assigned, the law was passed. Some of the most restrictive provisions have been removed, but the law restricts access to the ballot paper and makes it a crime to give water to people standing in line to vote.
The fight in Georgia turns out to be. A few days after the law was passed, a group of powerful black drivers, frustrated by the results, took action. Soon, Atlanta companies resumed the fight, and the controversy spread to other businesses across the country.
Last Sunday, William M. Lewis, chairman of investment banking services at Lazard, emailed a handful of academics and executives in Georgia asking what he could do. The group had a simple answer: let other black business leaders sound the alarm.
Minutes after receiving the answer, Mr. Lewis emailed other senior black executives, including Ken Chenault, the former CEO of American Express, and Mr. Frazier, the CEO of Merck. Ten minutes later, the men were on a video call and decided to write a public letter, according to two people who knew about the case.
That Sunday afternoon, Mr. Lewis lists 150 prominent black executives he compiles. The men soon collected more than 70 signatures, including Robert F. Smith, CEO of Vista Equity Partners; Raymond McGuire, a former Citigroup CEO who is running for mayor of New York; Ursula Burns, former CEO of Xerox; and Richard Parsons, former chairman of Citigroup and CEO of Time Warner.
Mr. Chenault said some executives asked to sign refused. “Some were worried about the attention it would draw on them and their business,” he said.
Before the group became known, Mr. Chenault according to mr. Bastian of Delta, according to three people familiar with the matter, issued. The men have known each other for decades and spoke at length on Tuesday night about Georgia legislation and what role Delta could play in the debate.
The next morning, the letter appeared as a full-page advertisement in The New York Times, and Mr. Chenault and Frazier speak to the media. “There’s no middle ground here,” Chenault told The Times. “You want more votes, or you want to suppress the mood.”
“It was unprecedented,” he said. Lewis said. “The African-American business community has never coincided around a non-business issue and made a call for action to the wider corporate community.”
Mr. Bastian could not sleep Tuesday night, according to two people familiar with the matter. He also received a stream of emails about the law from Black Delta employees, who make up 21 percent of the company’s workforce. Finally, Mr. Bastian concluded that it was very problematic, the two people said.
Late in the evening, he rescinded a fiery memorandum he had sent to Delta employees Wednesday morning. In it he abandoned all pretensions of neutrality and expressed his ‘crystal clear’ opposition to the law. “The whole reason for this bill was based on lies,” he wrote.
Hours later, Coca-Cola chief executive James Quincey issued a more restrained statement urging some of Mr. Bastian’s language parrot, and also uses the words “crystal clear”. Mr. Quincey, a British citizen who managed the crisis from his home in London, then took part in a 45-minute private video meeting with Mr. Jackson and me. Ifill and try to express his solidarity with their cause.
“A lot of CEOs want to do the right thing, they’re just scared of the setback and they need coverage,” said Darren Walker, who signed the letter and is president of the Ford Foundation and on the boards of three public companies. . . “What the letter did was cover it.”
But for Delta and Coca-Cola, the consequences were intense and immediate. Governor Kemp accuses Mr. Bastian of spreading “the same false attacks repeated by partisan activists.” And Republicans in the Georgia House voted to deprive Delta of a tax break, just like three years ago. “You do not feed a dog that bites your hand,” he said. Ralston, the house speaker, said.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio Posted a video in which he calls Delta and Coca-Cola “waking up corporate hypocrites” and Mr. Trump has joined calls for a boycott of companies that oppose the voting laws.
Companies that approached more cautiously were not targeted in the same way. UPS and Home Depot, major employers in Atlanta, also had early calls to oppose Georgia law, but instead made non-specific commitments to voting rights.
In the wake of the letter from the black executives and the statements by Delta and Coca-Cola, more companies emerged. American Airlines and Dell, both in Texas, on Thursday declared their opposition to the proposed voting legislation in the state. And on Friday, more than 170 companies signed a statement calling on elected officials across the country to refrain from enacting legislation that makes it harder for people to vote.
It was messy, but for many activists it was progress. “Companies do not exist in a vacuum,” said Stacey Abrams, who worked for years to elicit the Black vote in Georgia. “It will require a national response from companies to prevent this from happening in Georgia in other states.”