On March 11, Delta Air Lines dedicated a building at its Atlanta headquarters to Andrew Young, the civil rights leader and former mayor. At the ceremony, Young spoke about the restrictive voting rights bill that Republicans were passing in the Georgia state legislature. Then, after the speeches, Young’s daughter Andrea, herself a prominent activist, cornered Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian.
“I told him how important it was to oppose this law,” she said.
For Bastian, it was an early warning that the issue of voting rights may soon involve Delta in another national dispute. In 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.
After Trump’s misguided response to white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, Ken Frazier, Merck’s black chief executive, resigned from a presidential advisory group, prompting dozens of other executives to distance themselves from the president. Last year, after George Floyd’s death, hundreds of companies expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
But for companies, the dispute over the right to vote is different. An issue that both political parties consider a priority is not easily resolved with declarations of solidarity and donations. Taking a stand on voting rights legislation pushes companies into party politics and pits them against Republicans who have been willing to raise taxes and enact onerous regulations on companies that oppose them politically.
It is a new scenario to turn heads for big companies, which are trying to appease Democrats with a focus on social justice, as well as populist Republicans who are suddenly not afraid of breaking ties with business. Companies like Delta are caught in the middle and face profound political consequences, no matter what they do.
“It was very difficult under President Trump, and the business community hoped that with a change in management, things would be a little easier,” said Rich Lesser, chief executive of the Boston Consulting Group. “But business leaders still face challenges in dealing with a number of issues, and the issue of elections is among the most delicate.”
At first, Delta, Georgia’s biggest employer, tried to stay out of the fight for the right to vote. But after Georgia’s law was passed, a group of powerful black executives publicly called on large companies to oppose electoral legislation. Hours later, Delta and Coca-Cola abruptly reversed the course and disallowed Georgia law. On Friday, Major League Baseball withdrew the Atlanta All-Star game in protest, and more than 100 other companies demonstrated in defense of the right to vote.
The wave of support suggests that the clarion call of black executives will have an impact in the coming months, as Republican lawmakers in more than 40 states enact restrictive electoral laws. But already, the reaction has been swift, with Trump calling for boycotts of companies that oppose such laws, and Georgia lawmakers voting for new taxes on Delta.
“If people think it was a week of discomfort and uncertainty, it should be, and it needs to be,” said Sherliesn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund, which has been pressuring companies to get involved. “Companies need to find out who they are right now.”
Throughout all of this, Delta was at the center of the storm. Delta has long played a leading role in Georgia’s business and political life, and since Bastian became chief executive in 2016, he has been involved in some thorny political and social issues.
Delta supports LGBTQ rights, and in 2018, after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Bastian ended a partnership with the National Rifle Association. In response, Republican lawmakers in Georgia voted to eliminate a tax cut for Delta, which cost the company $ 50 million.
However, when 2021 started and Bastian focused on recovering his company from the pandemic, an even more partisan issue arose.
In February, civil rights activists began looking for Delta, denouncing what they saw as problematic provisions in the first drafts of the bill, including a ban on voting on Sunday, and asking the company to use its influence and lobbying muscles to influence the debate.
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 in order to avoid disturbing Republican lawmakers.
In early March, Delta lobbyists pressured David Ralston, the Republican head of the Georgia household, and advisers to Governor Brian Kemp to remove some far-reaching provisions from the bill.
But even as pressure was mounting on Delta to publicly oppose the legislation, Bastian’s advisers told 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 suit, refraining from criticizing the project.
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This passive approach infuriated activists. In mid-March, protesters staged a “die in”At the Coca-Cola museum. Bishop Reginald Jackson, an influential pastor from Atlanta, took to the streets with a megaphone and called for a boycott of Coca-Cola. Days later, activists flocked to the Delta terminal at Atlanta airport and asked Bastian to use his influence to “kill the bill”. Still, Bastian refused to say anything publicly.
Two weeks after Delta dedicated its building to Mr. Young, the law passed. Some of the more restrictive provisions have been removed, but the law limits access to the polls and makes it a crime to give water to people waiting in line to vote.
The fight in Georgia seemed to be over. Days after the law was passed, however, a group of powerful black executives frustrated with the results took action. Soon, Atlanta companies were drawn back into the fray and the controversy spread to other corporations across the country.
Last Sunday, William M. Lewis Jr., president of Lazard’s investment bank, sent an email to a handful of academics and executives from Georgia, asking what he could do. The group had a simple answer: make other black business leaders sound the alarm.
Minutes after receiving this response, Lewis sent an email to four other senior black executives, including Ken Chenault, the former chief executive of American Express, and Frazier, chief executive of Merck. Ten minutes later, the men were on a video call and decided to write a public letter, according to two people familiar with the matter.
That Sunday afternoon, Lewis sent an e-mail with a list of 150 prominent black executives from his curatorship. In a short time, the men collected more than 70 signatures, including Robert F. Smith, chief executive of Vista Equity Partners; Raymond McGuire, a former Citigroup executive running for New York City; Ursula Burns, former chief executive of Xerox; and Richard Parsons, former president of Citigroup and chief executive of Time Warner.
Chenault said that some executives who were asked to sign declined. “Some were concerned about the attention it would attract for them and their company,” he said.
Before the group went public, Chenault contacted Delta’s Bastian, according to three people familiar with the matter. The men have known each other for decades and, on Tuesday night, spoke at length about Georgia law and the role Delta could play in the debate.
The following morning, the letter appeared as a full-page ad in The New York Times, and Chenault and Frazier spoke to the media. “There is no middle ground here,” Chenault told The Times. “Either you advocate for more people to vote or you want to suppress the vote.”
“That was unprecedented,” said Lewis. “The African American business community has never come together on a non-commercial issue and has launched a call to action for the broader corporate community.”
Bastian was unable to sleep on Tuesday night after his call with Chenault, according to two people familiar with the matter. He also received a stream of emails about the Black Delta employee law, which represents 21% of the company’s workforce. Finally, Bastian came to the conclusion that it was deeply problematic, the two people said.
Later that night, he wrote an inflamed memo, which he sent to Delta employees on Wednesday morning. In it, he abandoned all pretense of neutrality and declared his “crystalline” opposition to the law. “The whole justification for this project was based on a lie,” he wrote.
Hours later, James Quincey, Coca-Cola’s chief executive, issued a more reserved statement that echoed some of Bastian’s language, also using the words “crystal clear”. Mr. Quincey, a British citizen who managed the crisis at his London home, participated in a 45-minute private video conference with Mr. Jackson and Mrs. Ifill and tried to express his solidarity with their cause.
“Many CEOs want to do the right thing, they are just afraid of the negative impact and need coverage,” said Darren Walker, who signed the letter and is chairman of the Ford Foundation and the boards of three public companies. “What the letter did was to provide coverage.”
For Delta and Coca-Cola, the repercussions were intense and immediate. Governor Kemp accused Bastian of spreading “the same false attacks repeated by party activists”. And Republicans in the Georgia House voted to withdraw Delta from a tax cut, just as they did three years ago. “You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand,” said Ralston, the speaker at the house.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida posted a video in which he called Delta and Coca-Cola “aroused corporate hypocrites” and Trump adhered to calls for a boycott of companies that were speaking out against voting laws.
Companies that took a more cautious approach were not targeted in the same way. UPS and Home Depot, Atlanta’s major employers, also faced initial calls to oppose Georgia law, but instead made non-specific voting rights commitments.
In the wake of the letter from black executives and the statements by Delta and Coca-Cola, more companies came forward. On Thursday, American Airlines and Dell, both based in Texas, declared their opposition to the proposed voting legislation in that state. And on Friday, more than 170 companies signed a statement asking elected officials across the country to refrain from enacting laws that would make it difficult for people to vote.
It was confusing, but for many activists, it was progress. “Businesses don’t exist in a vacuum,” said Stacey Abrams, who worked for years to get the black vote in Georgia. “It will take a national response from companies to prevent what happened in Georgia from happening in other states.”