“If we come out in one way, then we tick off the customer base,” Citizens Bank CEO Bruce Van Saun told CNN Business. They are skittish about alienating customers, not to mention employees, politicians and regulators. Other business leaders have taken a more careful approach to the voting rights debate. Hoffman added that while some “loud few” may propose boycotts, “I believe what we will see is many, many Americans will decide that they prefer doing their business with companies that support voting rights, clearly and unequivocally.”īank CEO: No ‘upside’ to getting drawn into every debate Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that corporations “will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs.”Īsked for his reaction to the efforts by Trump and McConnell, Hoffman said: “I think it’s anti-American for any politician to attempt to silence other Americans from expressing their political views - which is guaranteed by the First Amendment.” (KO) and other brands that expressed concern about voting legislation.
Trump recently called for a boycott of Major League Baseball, Delta Air Lines The willingness of CEOs to wade into the debate around voting rights is angering some conservatives. “The right to vote should be distributed in the broadest sense and anything that goes against that shouldn’t be tolerated,” Moynihan told CNN’s Poppy Harlow. (BAC) CEO Brian Moynihan last week called for a bipartisan federal commission to investigate restrictive voting legislation. (MSFT) and partner at venture capital firm Greylock Partners, is also among the hundreds of executives who signed a statement opposing discriminatory legislation that appeared as a full-page ad last week in the New York Times.įollowing the extremely polarizing 2020 presidential election and former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud, lawmakers have introduced 361 bills with restrictive provisions in 47 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. Organizers said executives expressed strong support during the meeting for re-evaluating campaign donations to candidates who back voter restrictions and reconsidering investments in states that enact such legislation. Hoffman also urged business leaders to give employees paid time off vote and actively encourage employees and customers to vote, including by holding get-out-the-vote drives.ĬEOs debate action to influence voting issueĭozens of business leaders, including Hoffman, recently held a Zoom call to brainstorm ways to fight controversial voting restrictions being debated around the country. I believe that companies who show a strong support for American values and the right to vote for all citizens may gain more business and elevated brand value,” “This should be a simple, single-issue reason to stop supporting any politician,” said Hoffman, who was LinkedIn’s founding CEO. The billionaire investor hopes companies will withhold economic support from politicians who seek to limit the right of any American citizen to vote. “Protecting voter rights and making voting more accessible is both pro-business, and more importantly, pro-American,” Hoffman told CNN Business in an email. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is urging business leaders to back up their verbal support with concrete action that will send a message to politicians. A growing number of CEOs are speaking out on voting rights.
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