46 Time November 8/November 15, 2021
Nation
44% OF AMERICANS
TRUST CEOS TO
DO THE RIGHT
THING, ON PAR
WITH GOVERNMENT
LEADERS
them to promote political participation to their employees and customers.
For the first time, thousands of companies gave millions of workers paid
time off to vote and volunteer at the polls. By October 2020, you could
scarcely visit a retailer or open a mobile app without encountering a pro-
voting, nonpartisan corporate message.
After the CEOs’ Nov. 7 statement, many—including Sonnenfeld—
assumed their work was done. Despite Trump’s refusal to concede, doz-
ens of courts rejected his challenges, all 50 states certified their electoral
votes, and the presidential transition began. But on Jan. 3, the Washing-
ton Post published a recording of Trump’s phone call to Georgia secre-
tary of state Brad Raffensperger, in which he cajoled and berated the
election official to “find” the nearly 12,000 votes it would take to reverse
his loss of the state.
So on Jan. 5, Sonnenfeld reconvened his executives. This Zoom was
better attended than the first, with nearly 60 CEOs—and more con-
cerned. Nobody quibbled with the “coup” terminology this time. There
were CEOs Sonnenfeld had never met who had demanded invites after
hearing about the November call. There were right-wing executives and
former Obama and Bush Cabinet secretaries. The group voted unani-
mously to suspend donations to the GOP members of Congress who
contested the election.
The next day, Jan. 6, validated their fears. In the aftermath of the Capi-
tol riot, the group met again, and this time, 100% of the CEOs favored im-
peachment, Sonnenfeld says. The National Association of Manufacturers,
known as the most conservative of the major trade lobbies, subsequently
called for impeachment publicly, to the political world’s astonishment.
Nearly a year later, 78% of the companies that pledged to withhold dona-
tions have kept true to their word, according to Sonnenfeld’s analysis of
the latest campaign-finance data. One D.C.-based fundraiser for Republi-
can candidates tells TIME she has virtually given up seeking money from
corporate PACs as a result.
Sonnenfeld’s efforts didn’t end with Biden’s Inauguration. He was par-
ticularly disturbed by the election law the Georgia legislature began con-
sidering in the spring, one of many GOP-backed measures to make it harder
to vote and easier to interfere with vote counting in future elections. In
1964, it was the former president of Coca-Cola who publicly shamed the
white Atlanta business community into honoring Martin Luther King Jr.
after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Now Georgia’s 34 Fortune 1000 com-
panies were largely silent in the face of a modern civil rights issue. In late
March, Sonnenfeld and a former UPS executive penned a joint Newsweek
op-ed calling out their “cowardice.”
On a subsequent Zoom, two leading Black executives, Merck’s Frazier
and Kenneth Chenault of American Express, got more than 100 fellow
CEOs to sign on to a statement opposing the Georgia voting law, which
was published as a full-page ad in the New York Times and Washington
Post. “The people who signed the letter did so because they didn’t see it
as a partisan issue,” Frazier tells TIME. “They felt, as business leaders,
that they shouldn’t stand on the sideline when our fundamental rights as
Americans are at stake.”
But these moves also sparked a political backlash. Executives who
had interceded during the election’s aftermath began to fall away from
the group, leery of liberal activists seeking to apply similar pressure
on other issues, like Texas’ new abortion law. The coalition that ral-
lied with such alacrity to defend American democracy now appears
splintered, unsure of the extent of the continuing threat or how to con-
front it.
“I really thought Jan. 6 was a turning point, a tipping point, but
now I think maybe it was just an inflection point,” says Mia Mends, the
Houston- based CEO of Impact Ventures at global
food- services giant Sodexo. Companies including
hers that spoke out against voting restrictions in
Texas faced threats of retaliation from state GOP
officials. “When that day of reckoning comes, on
what side will you be? On what side were you?”There have been no more pop-up Zooms. Son-
nenfeld is back to his old grind, gathering CEOs
and nudging them toward public- spiritedness.
On a recent Tuesday in New Haven, he led a fre-
netic virtual discussion with the leaders of Star-
bucks, United, Xerox, Dell, Pepsi, Kellogg’s, Duke
Energy and others, along with members of Con-
gress and current and former Administration of-
ficials from both parties. Adam Aron, the CEO of
AMC Entertainment, dialed in from his bedroom,
looking disheveled, only to be hit with an aggres-
sive Sonnenfeld question about whether the tech-
stock mania that had sent his company’s value
skyrocketing was really a scam.
Sonnenfeld understands that the CEOs feel
whipsawed by the political chaos. “They’re being
pelted with so many different causes,” he tells me
after the Zoom, his town car speeding to the air-
port so he can make a board meeting in Miami.
But he is scathing in his contempt for financiers
who have ostentatiously embraced socially con-
scious investing while failing to speak up on vot-
ing and democracy issues. “The sheer, screaming
cowardice of these institutional investors—they
own 80% of corporate America, and they never
miss a stage to proclaim their commitments to
[environmental and social justice],” he says.
“Where are they now? Why are they the last to
take a stand?”
Yet Sonnenfeld has no doubt that having
stepped up for democracy at a crucial time, the
CEOs would do it again. “The GOP has created
these wedge issues to divide society, and the busi-
ness community is saying, ‘Wait a minute, that’s
not us, those are not our interests,’ ” he says. “That
doesn’t mean they’re going to rush off and sup-
port Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Party.
But they’re trying to break free and find their
own way.” —With reporting by Simmone Shah
and Julia ZorThian