How Corporate Activists Are Looking To Protect Companies Who Make Anti-Gay Donations

Retail giant Target's $150,000 donation to support an anti-gay candidate in Minnesota has caused the company to experience what many might consider a summer from hell. Bad public relations. Activists showing up at stores and chastising the company. Hundreds of thousands of emails sent to the company. And consumers boycotting the store, and pledging to spend their money elsewhere.

Not even Tara from TrueBlood has had it that bad, and she's going through quite the tumultuous season.

But now comes word that a group of corporate activists, along with a hardcore anti-abortion group in Minnesota, are looking to work the legal system in order to overturn a Minnesota law that requires companies to disclose political contributions. After witnessing the brouhaha that Target's anti-gay donation caused, these corporate activists want to guard companies from having to indicate where they're spending their money.

Nothing could be further from the tenets of good governance and transparency than allowing corporations to keep their political contributions in the dark.

By now, most of us are familiar with the Supreme Court decision from earlier this year, Citizens United, which labeled corporate spending on elections as free speech, and said it should not be limited. That kind of crazy talk has many, including President Obama, worried that corporations will be able to buy their desired election results. And true to form, that's exactly what Target (and Best Buy, who also gave $100,000) have attempted to do in throwing wads of cash in support of Tom Emmer, a rabidly conservative candidate for governor in Minnesota. In the eyes of Target and its corporate executives, Emmer is a candidate that's better for business, regardless of whether he has anti-gay views that make Anita Bryant look like Dennis Kucinich.

Right now, corporate disclosure laws are made on a state-by-state basis. There is no federal level disclosure law (thanks to several GOPers who filibustered an attempt to pass one earlier this summer), meaning that it is entirely up to states to regulate whether corporations have to reveal their political donations. Minnesota, thankfully, has a good disclosure law on the books, which requires public reporting of corporations who get involved in politics. Otherwise, we would have never known about Target's shenanigans (or Best Buy's) to donate to Tom Emmer.

But now activists — including Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, the Taxpayers League of Minnesota and Coastal Travel Enterprises — want a federal judge to review whether Minnesota's disclosure law is legal or not, given the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United.

Amazing. Just when you think there's no more room for cowardice in politics, someone (or in this case, a group of folks) prove ya' wrong. All three of these entities are champions of anti-gay Republican candidates, and don't want to be held accountable for supporting such folks. Which is why they'd like Minnesota law to be rewritten in order to make political contributions by corporations as stealth as can be.

A federal judge will rule on the case on September 20. That's one day before the next deadline in Minnesota for corporations to detail their political contributions, and according to experts, "an injunction could allow corporations to skip that reporting deadline and another just before the November elections and spend unlimited money on political advertising without needing to disclose any of it."

Meaning that if Target or Best Buy or others decide to support Tom Emmer with another six figure check in the future, it's entirely possible that we won't ever find out ... or at least find out before the November 2010 election.

Photo credit: NikonS3000