Republicans have spent months laying the groundwork to challenge a defeat of Donald Trump in the presidential election. During a fund-raising call organized by corporate lawyers in September, Douglas Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, asked for help if those efforts veer outside legal grounds.
According to two people on the call, Emhoff asked the lawyers to reiterate to their corporate clients the risks posed by efforts to undermine the integrity of the election.
The request underlines the pressure some executives are feeling to repeat public calls they made four year ago, urging politicians to respect the results of the 2020 presidential election.
But making those kinds of public statements may have gotten more complicated. Executives, who were outspoken during the pandemic, have resumed their efforts to stay out of politics. And seemingly anodyne sentiments are now politically charged: Only one of two candidates has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. That candidate has support of roughly half the country. And he has made it clear that if he takes power, he’s willing to go after his enemies.
Democracy, as a term, “has become kind of loaded” for executives, Charles Elson, the founding director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, told DealBook.
“I think that’s why you haven’t heard anything from them. But you got two weeks to go.”
The landscape has changed. The Blackstone C.E.O. Stephen Schwarzman and the hedge fund boss Nelson Peltz, two billionaires who condemned Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, have since offered him their support. And one of his most high-profile supporters, Tesla C.E.O. Elon Musk, has questioned the accuracy of elections themselves: “When you have mail-in ballots and no proof of citizenship, it’s almost impossible to prove cheating,” Musk said at a rally in Pennsylvania this week.
Some corporate chiefs may have shifted because they prefer Trump’s deregulatory agenda or they share concerns over immigration policy.
Several of Harris’s influential supporters, who include the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and the entrepreneur Mark Cuban, have taken a starkly different view of the election stakes. They point to preservation of democracy as one reason for their support. And they argue there is no functioning business without a working democracy.
Many executives are waiting. The Business Roundtable, a lobbying group that represents large companies, this week issued a statement underlining that “the stability of America’s economy depends on free and fair elections.” Several hundred small businesses have also signed a letter supporting “the fundamental principles of American democracy.”
But individual executives speaking out now risk alienating employees and customers, Kathryn Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy group that represents some of the biggest companies in finance, told DealBook. She believes more executives are likely to speak out should any potential threat to the country become a reality.
“If it appears that it’s going to be disruptive to the functioning of government, or threatening to constitutional democracy, it will call for a response from business leaders and leaders throughout society,” she said.
They may not be willing to pull their pocketbooks. The weeks following the Jan. 6 attack saw a pause in giving to Republicans who did not vote to certify the election. But that faded quickly. By 2022, overall donations from Fortune 500 companies and about 700 trade associations to election objectors in Congress had fallen by about 10 percent compared to 2020, according to the political watchdog Accountable.US. And more than 250 companies and industry groups increased donations to those lawmakers.
“I don’t know of anybody who paused, who is continuing to pause,” Kenneth Gross, a lawyer advising on corporate giving at Akin Gump, told DealBook. Gross said he had no recent conversations with clients about a similar tact this year.
The pressure is rising. In a letter to business leaders released Friday, a number of business associations, including Main Street Alliance and Black Economic Alliance, urged business leaders to vocalize their support of free and fair elections. “We know first-hand that a vibrant and stable economy relies on a strong democracy,” they wrote.
“They’re asking, should we start talking?” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale professor who worked with many major companies in their response to the 2020 election, told DealBook. “They’re starting to talk about getting prepared for what they would say and how they say it.”
— Lauren Hirsch
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Banks reported better-than-expected earnings. Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase reported a combined $6.5 billion in investment banking fees for last quarter, up 27 percent from a year earlier. Smaller players like PNC and Charles Schwab also had a strong showing, appearing to have moved on from last year’s regional banking crisis.
Big tech went nuclear. Google and Amazon struck deals with nuclear power plants to fuel their data centers as the artificial intelligence boom demands more energy. The tech industry’s backing of nuclear projects could help reinvigorate a power source that has struggled.
Elliott Investment Management took another step to replace Southwest’s board. The activist hedge fund made its first demand for a special meeting of the airline’s shareholders, where it hopes to install its eight candidates for the company’s board. Southwest pushed back, saying that it had sought to reach a settlement.
A group of big election bettors kept internet sleuths busy. Four accounts on the prediction market Polymarket have together wagered about $30 million on a Trump win. It’s not clear who the accounts belong to or what their motives are: Are they convinced Trump will win, or are they trying to influence the election by making a Trump victory look more likely?
Who the business of baseball is rooting for
No matter which Major League Baseball teams end up facing off for the World Series starting next week, the business of baseball is set up for a win. Three of the four remaining contenders — the Los Angeles Dodgers, the New York Yankees and the New York Mets — are home teams to the country’s two biggest TV markets; and the fourth, the Cleveland Guardians, hasn’t won a World Series since 1948.
Big fan bases and exciting story lines are welcome news after last year’s matchup between the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks earned the lowest ratings for a World Series ever. But which matchup sports executives are rooting for may depend on their particular business interests.
Television: Yankees vs. Dodgers. New York and Los Angeles are the first- and second-largest TV markets in the country. And the series would feature two of the biggest stars in baseball, the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani and Yankees’ Aaron Judge.
Fox owns the U.S. broadcast rights to the World Series. Patrick Crakes, a former Fox Sports executive, told DealBook that a matchup between these two teams could push prices for a 30-second spot in Game 7 up to $700,000. He estimated ads for other matchups would be priced about 10 percent to 15 percent lower.
John Kosner, a former ESPN executive and the president of Kosner Media, told DealBook his second choice for maximizing ratings would be a Yankees vs. Mets matchup. “N.Y.C. is the biggest media market and still the center for advertising, and this series would generate a lot of attention,” he told DealBook.
Merch: Yankees vs. Mets. DealBook hears that the sports apparel company Fanatics is rooting for a subway series. Why? Because a big portion of merchandise sales associated with the World Series will be in championship gear.
New York’s teams both have huge fan bases, and if one of them wins, it’ll theoretically create the biggest opportunity to sell that celebratory gear. Another factor at play: Fans who have withstood long World Series droughts typically buy more souvenirs.
Tickets: Whoever plays the most games. The ticket seller SeatGeek’s C.E.O. and founder, Jack Groetzinger, said that a Yankees vs. Dodgers matchup would be his first choice, because the teams “have massive followings that attract not just die-hard fans but also casual viewers,” but that “what really matters for ticketers is having a competitive, extended series.” More games means more tickets.
Your thoughts on the remote work debate
Last weekend, we wrote about why C.E.O.s like Amazon’s Andy Jassy and Goldman Sachs’s David Solomon have forced employees to return to the office full-time despite research suggesting that hybrid work can benefit employers. Many of you wrote to us with your own thoughts on why executives and researchers disagree. Here are a few:
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Margaret Campbell, a professor of marketing at the University of California, Riverside, wrote that it is important to consider what each group is focusing on: “When I talk to executives, they are concerned about the effect of remote work on productivity and, critically, creativity and problem-solving,” she wrote. “While they are happy to have employees who are satisfied with their work, they are trying to optimize the extent to which the firm is providing value to their customers.”
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Cassia Bandeau, an architect in Los Angeles, pointed to a proposed class-action lawsuit that an Amazon employee brought against the company seeking compensation for office expenses while working from home (the lawsuit failed). Companies are “already paying for large offices, so the idea of compensating for home office expenses as well is likely seen as a huge unneeded expense,” she wrote.
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Leslie Graves, the founder of the politics website Ballotpedia, wishes that more research looked into the specific work habits and managerial practices that make remote work succeed. “Because it has always been remote, our managers have created many tactics and strategies that cause our fully remote workplace to work, and to have a strong culture,” she wrote.
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