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Toyota suspending donations to election-objectors

Yahoo Finance Video

Thu, Jul 8, 2021, 12:42 PM

KRISTIN MYERS: Welcome back. Well, we've got some breaking news from Toyota. Now the automaker says that it's going to suspend donations to members of Congress who voted to overturn the US elections. We have Yahoo Finance's senior columnist Rick Newman here with some of the latest details. So Rick, tell us more about this decision from Toyota.

RICK NEWMAN: This has been controversial for the past few days since a report by a watchdog group in Washington, showing that after the January 6 riots at the Capitol, Toyota donated a total of about $56,000 to 38 different Republicans who all voted to overturn the election results. And this has just created a real backlash against the company. There was an op-ed in the Washington Post in the last couple of days calling Toyota the official vehicle of insurrectionists.

So Toyota figured they had to do something about it. And they came out today and said they're going to stop donations to any politician, any member of Congress who did not vote to certify the election back in January. And that was a total of 147 Republicans. So that's a big do not donate list.

KRISTIN MYERS: And how much again did Toyota donate to all of them, either individually on average or combined?

RICK NEWMAN: It was-- I think it was about $56,000 to 38 different members of Congress. These were donations ranging from $1,000 to $5,000. That is not a lot of money in the world of political contributions. Basically what that probably was is, you want to get some face time with a member of Congress who might represent a district where you have a plant or a facility. And Toyota does have a lot of facilities around the United States. You go to a fundraiser, you pay the fee. It's between probably $1,000 and $5,000. And maybe you get some face with that member of Congress or that person's staff.

So Toyota now saying they're not going to do that. But there are still ways these members of Congress could get a lot of money. One of the things corporations do is they contribute to the big fundraising committees for each party in the House and in the Senate. Democrats have these, too. And then those committees can take that money and they can donate to members.

There are all other kinds of ways to sort of donate money to intermediate committees, which, then, in turn, can fund these 147 Republicans or any member of Congress they want to, any candidate they want to in either party. So these members of Congress are still going to be able to get money. It's just going to have to be indirect. And, of course, in the US political system, unfortunately, there are a lot of ways to hide money.

KRISTIN MYERS: So I know you said that they mentioned that Toyota was the official vehicle of insurrectionists. But just as you were saying that, I was thinking, look, Toyota is not the only one, not the only company by a long shot-- and you and I have talked about this so many times-- that is donating not just to those congressional members, but to all members of Congress. Are there indicators that there are other companies that are also funding some of these same congressmen and women or perhaps other companies that might be following in Toyota's footsteps as well that might have been named and shamed as a part of that report?

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, there were a couple that came up in this report by this group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Cigna was another company that has been giving some donations. They had said they would stop donations. And they kind of changed their explanation a little bit, saying, they only were going to stop donations to members of Congress who supported or encouraged violence. So that was a little different.

But look, Boeing is on this list. Boeing does not contribute or has not contribute directly to any of these candidates this year, but it has given a lot of money to the committees. Again, sophisticated donors are just going to give their money to the committees. You can also do this through industry groups, such as the US Chamber of Commerce. Every big company has an industry group specific to its own business, the semiconductor industry, the Telecom Industry Association, whatever it might be.

And that's not even touching on dark money contributions, which are another way to get money in the system without any fingerprints. So there are tons of ways to get money to candidates who are going to do your bidding on Capitol Hill without putting your fingerprints on them. And I think Toyota, if anything, they just seem a little bit naive, like they didn't realize that this back-- that they would be generating this backlash, where many of the other corporate donors probably said, we're not going to give anything directly to these candidates. But we don't mind if some of our money finds their way to them anyway.

KRISTIN MYERS: Yeah, and I think it'll also be just interesting to see, as we see these voting restriction legislations, if we start to see more and more companies come out and say they're not going to be donating to members of Congress that start making moves like that that have swift public backlash. All right, senior columnist Rick Newman, thanks so much for jumping on with some of that breaking news.

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Toyota suspending donations to election-objectors

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