Target Faces Protests over Political Donation

Everything in life has become a risk. No position that any retailer takes today will go unchallenged. Communicated messages about an issue that someone doesn’t agree with will bring out protesters. So why do retailers choose to get into such messes? I don’t know. It would be better for Target to try to find other ways to support political candidates and other favored issues, but I don’t believe Target or any retailer should be intimidated away from having their convictions.

Sometimes consumer groups fail to understand the relationship between business and politics. It is often necessary to grease the palms of politicians in order to advance the agenda of the company. These politicians might be of a different party than some of your consumer groups. Still you have to be real and, if this candidate has a high probability of winning, then you need to be on his or her good side.

Often it really doesn’t matter which party the politician belongs to or what kind of agenda they have. Politicians will say or support whatever they need to in order to have the best chance of getting elected.

The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter what the politician supports in public to get voters. What is more important is, will I get a nice ROI on my contribution? My guess is that if the gay-lesbian community would donate $150,000 to Mr. Emmer, he might just have a change of heart. It’s a calculated business expense built into the system.

My clients and I often have no clue what party some of the politicians belong to. It’s just like stepping up to the ticket counter at a movie theater and paying admission, never caring which party the person inside the booth belongs to.

This Supreme Court ruling is going to affect our country for decades to come. It hasn’t gotten nearly enough press. Companies, including retailers, will be emboldened to support candidates they perceive fit one or more of their agenda items. Backlash will ensue.

What retailers should do and what they WILL do are two different things. They should not, but they will.

I can still remember being “gently suggested” to sign a petition requesting Congress grant China most favored nation status back in the ’80s, because my employer–a private label shoe retailer–wanted to have the lowest possible costs. In the spirit of the era, I “just said no.”

Perhaps scariest of all is the overarching climate of anger and fear that pervades this country now. The Tea Party has its issues, social conservatives have their point of view, and now we’ll get to see serious backlash from the other side.

It’s a sad state of affairs. As for me personally, I won’t shop Target or Best Buy any more frequently than I now buy BP gasoline. They just put themselves on my “no fly” zone. What a shame.

Max has it right. The thing is, if they stop donating “openly” what’s the other option–“secretly?” How will that make our society healthy, honest, caring and cohesive?

As a grateful and enterprising new US citizen I still don’t get the anger, fear, obsession, and even hatred pervading every dimension of our society–all driven by politics. It’s just a no-win all around. It seems one can’t go a single hour without running into a tirade about guns or gays or government. To make matters worse most of those tirades are sadly uninformed and illogical; they’re just angry. I think most of the anger comes out of meaninglessness and these hot ‘issues’ become a futile substitute for purpose.

So a company gives money to someone who doesn’t totally match up with your beliefs–yup, let’s put all our energy into a boycott, cause as much unrest as we possibly can and see if we can damage an enterprise that employs hundreds of thousands of people and keeps thousands of vendors in business. I swear if someone was for gay rights (or against gay rights) but had found a solution to world hunger we’d start a boycott. Maybe after I’ve voted a few times I’ll join in. But I sure hope not.

This is the central problem of our world right now. We don’t know how to think and believe differently…and still do something for the greater good. I think I feel a new book coming on!

I would not go so far to say supporting Tom Emmer was a blunder by Target. Sure, Target might lose a few million in sales from the gay-lesbian community. On the other hand perhaps Mr. Emmer can put roadblocks up keeping Wal-Mart, Costco and other competitors from opening stores. Maybe he can get Target’s tax rate dropped. Maybe he can make sure Target gets that exit ramp off the freeway and Wal-Mart doesn’t. The list goes on. It was a calculated risk and we won’t know the ROI on that contribution for some time yet. It’s too early to tell if it was a blunder.

Perhaps the key word in Tom Ryan’s question is “openly” support. Businesses of all stripes have always engaged in political contribution and lobbying–either directly or indirectly through associations. And why shouldn’t they? Business contributes as much or more than any individual (certain multi-billionaires excepted perhaps) to funding of government–both directly through corporate taxes and indirectly through employee payroll taxes, taxes on dividends, etc. So why should they be excluded from the right to try to influence that government the same way the aforementioned multi-billionaires do? Or the same way you and I do with our convicted, if not convincingly large, contributions to our favorite candidates and causes?

And while there are certainly multiple views of the Supreme Court’s ruling in CU, the net result was to eliminate an attempt to muzzle both corporate and private groups who band together to support issues they feel passionately about–whether it be the GLBT community or the tea party.

As for retailer’s choosing to make individual contributions and the business impact, the game changer in this situation is the same as in so many others today–the internet. It’s unlimited access to real-time information and and rapid-fire communication and organization makes contributing to the Sierra Club’s efforts to save the Snail Darter a risky decision.

Retailers in particular face this challenge because they have a very direct one-on-one interaction with consumers. Choosing to step out from behind the safety of an association can easily be criticized as unnecessary risk taking on the part of management–and maybe it is.

In a world where one of the earliest celebrities to come out of the closet (Elton John) plays for the right wing commentator’s wedding (Rush Limbaugh) and denounces the California boycott of Arizona (at a concert in Tucson) where he is soon to be joined by Lady Gaga–how the ‘heck’ is anyone supposed to know what’s politically ‘safe’ anymore?

So as Max and others have said–maybe retailers should “just say no.” Maybe we’ve reached the point where that right to political free speech in all forms the SOTUS just reaffirmed isn’t worth it anymore. But I hope not.

Retailers choose to support political candidates at their own risk. Unfortunately for Target, they are now confronted with “Boycott Target” groups springing up on Facebook, because they openly donated $150,000 to Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate, Tom Emmer, who openly opposes gay marriage. It’s all unfortunate on so many levels all the way around because our political system depends on such donations from corporations, as well as individuals, but retailers need to be careful about the message to their very own consumers that such donations might indicate.

I remember deciding years ago not to put political bumper stickers supporting one candidate over another on my car. The reason was simple: I don’t know, or care, who my customers support; but I did not want to risk offending them by showing who I support. To this day I do not have bumper stickers on my car. Nothing has changed. I do not and cannot afford to lose any business or business opportunities because of my political preferences especially in this heated environment.

Business issues can not be separated from the world issues as a whole. What affects us in the world arena also affects us in the retail world when we connect the dots by speaking out, donating excessive funding or supporting issues contrary to the normal ebb and flow of our new daily life.

Target has some clean up work to do in order to make this a non issue at the cash registers. Customers will defy the decisions they disagree with in the only way available, shopping where it will hurt Target the most. Their timing was totally poor as was the decision to speak out when knowingly business was going to be affected.

The idea of a staging a boycott over this issue reminds me a little of the day everyone was going to quit Facebook…and then didn’t.

I think the sad reality is that you only have to be careful if you are supporting a conservative. If you support a liberal, the media positions you as a good guy. Did anyone hear that Home Depot supported a gay pride fest or that Disney supported a homosexual benefit or that Estee Lauder donates to Planned Parenthood? My guess is no. You may agree or disagree with those causes, but the bottom line is some people disagree with the conservative agenda and some disagree with the liberal agenda.

Companies and individuals donate where they believe it benefits themselves, their business or their community. Scrutinize all you like, but do it on both sides of the aisle. A little more balance from our media would be a very welcomed change.

I doubt that the marketing people at Target would have been in favour of this move. They’re pretty savvy–and it’s unlikely that they would have said “yes, let’s support an extreme candidate,” no matter what party he or she was from.

More likely, this move reflects what really is going on with corporate donations: the CEO or a small handful of top execs are donating corporate money to candidates that they PERSONALLY support. And in the process, will end up costing the company millions of dollars in lost sales.

I’m against political donations being allowed for companies–after all there is a reason corporations can’t vote at the ballot–they aren’t people. But moves like this will actually do a lot of good for democracy, as they will backfire and raise people’s consciousness on the issue, while forcing them to examine the politics of the companies they patronise.

We’ll see how many CEOs are foolish enough to keep hijacking their company’s political capital for personal use. I doubt there will be many more. The costs in lost sales and stock market value will pile up pretty quickly.