WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday warned corporations of “serious consequences” if they use their economic power in support of what he described as far-left causes, including opposition to a new voting law in Georgia.
“From election law to environmentalism to radical social agendas to the Second Amendment, parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government,” McConnell said. “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order.”
McConnell’s rebuke comes as a number of corporations, including Delta Air Lines Inc. and the Coca-Cola Co., have criticized Georgia’s new election law. Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game from Atlanta, a move endorsed by President Joe Biden.
McConnell dismissed comparisons of Georgia’s new voting laws, passed by Republicans, to the Jim Crow voting restrictions for African Americans. He said many states run by Democrats, including New York, have fewer days of early voting than Georgia’s new law requires, and he cited polling showing most Americans favor voter ID requirements.
“Nobody really thinks this current dispute comes anywhere near the horrific racist brutality of segregation,” he said. Democrats are trying to use the controversy to pass a sweeping federal law on voting, he said.
“Our private sector must stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex,” McConnell said. “Americans do not need or want big business to amplify disinformation or react to every manufactured controversy with frantic left-wing signaling.
