Target and Best Buy Shareholders Go Ballistic Over Anti-Gay Donations

Hell hath no fury like a group of shareholders angry with a company. Exhibit A is Target, and Exhibit B is Best Buy.

Last night, three socially responsible investment firms — Walden Asset Management, Trillium Asset Management Corporation, and Calvert Asset Management Company — issued a press release saying that shareholders of both Target and Best Buy are introducing resolutions to address the controversial donation that both companies made to support a vehemently anti-gay candidate, Tom Emmer, in Minnesota.

Target, as has been widely documented, dropped $150,000 in direct cash and in-kind donations to a group supporting Emmer; Best Buy, for their part, gave $100,000. And Emmer, let's not forget, is a man who wants to ban gay marriage, wants to prevent gays and lesbians from raising families, and financially supports a ministry that advocates violence toward LGBT people. Not necessarily positions that match up with the values of these two corporate giants.

And that's exactly the point that these shareholders are making in their statement.

“Tom Emmer has made it no secret that as governor he would deny members of the LGBT their full civil rights. No company can credibly claim that it continues to support the LGBT community if at the same time it is financing a deliberate effort to keep it in second-class citizenship," said Shelley Alpern, a Vice President at Trillium.

Altogether, these three investment firms represent shareholders that control more than 1.1 million shares of common stock in Target (worth $57.5 million), and 344,000 shares of Best Buy (worth $11.3 million). That's a lot of dough. And their resolutions call on both companies to re-examine their political contributions and spending processes, as well as the criteria used for such contributions. Both resolutions also ask for oversight measures to be put in place to monitor political donations.

Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that freed up corporate spending on politics and elections in unprecedented ways, paved the way for companies like Target and Best Buy to support candidates like Emmer. But as Stu Dalheim, Director of Shareholder Advocacy at Calvert Asset Management Company, put it, the wrong message to take away from Target's and Best Buy's debacle (which has drawn protests of both companies, and majorly bad public relations) would be that corporations should find a way to mask their political spending.

"We continue to call for increased transparency and disclosure of corporate political spending. The absolutely wrong conclusion for companies to draw from this controversy is that everything will be all right as long as they conceal their political contributions," Dalheim said. “Instead they must ensure that they have a transparent governance framework that ensures they align their political spending with their business interests and stated policies.”

Those are some tough fighting words. Better yet would be a pledge, much like Goldman Sachs made, to stay the hell out of spending on political campaigns.

Photo credit: Boycott Target Facebook Page