Nowadays it seems as if the political world is getting bigger and bigger with more actors entering the space, all with competing views. One of the biggest and most influential actors in today’s political world is big businesses. Big businesses are taking the political world by storm, giving donations here and policy opinions there, and it should come as no surprise that for most of the time, they are usually successful in achieving their goals.
The most recent example that is currently taking place in Florida is Disney’s reaction to the bill dubbed as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill. The ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill was introduced in the Florida House of Representatives and passed on Feb. 24 when it was then sent to the Florida Senate, eventually passing on March 8. Currently, the bill now sits on Governor Ron Desantis’ desk waiting to either be signed into law or vetoed.
Originally, on March 11, Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek sent an email to all his employees stating that they were pausing all political donations in the state of Florida and increasing support for advocacy groups. However, this was not enough for many of the employees under The Walt Disney Company. Employees of the company started a website named ‘whereischapek’ where they state their demands, one of them being to cease all campaign donations to many political figures like Florida Governor Ron Desantis and Dennis Baxley, a legislator in the Florida Senate. As of March 24, there has been no response to these demands.
This is not the first time a big business has gotten involved in local politics. In 2019, there was a lawsuit filed by many different civil rights organizations, such as Black Lives Matter and the Center for Constitutional Rights, in Arizona against 26 lawmakers because they attended the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) summit. ALEC is a political enigma; it is a nonprofit organization composed of conservative state legislators who can draft and share model legislation among them. The legality of ALEC is called into question constantly because along with these state legislators, there are also corporations that have membership within ALEC. Essentially, these corporations can be argued as being equals with these legislators. The corporations benefit by giving their opinions on bills they believe should be introduced in various states, such as the Stand Your Ground law (another law passed in Florida back in 2005) that Wal-Mart and the NRA supported. Legislators benefit by receiving goods from these corporations, such as political donations to help them campaign. ALEC essentially makes it easy for legislators to do their job and for corporations to affect local politics.
This is just a very brief overview of the instances where big businesses have decided to use their power in order to exert influence over local politics. The political world is expanding past voters and legislatures and taking in new actors that have numerous ways of exerting influence. Whether this is a beneficial or detrimental development in American politics is up for debate, but it certainly will not be stopping anytime soon.
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