Where are all the Right-Leaning CEOs?

I was speaking last week at the annual summit for PAC—Public Affairs Council—on Corporate and Political Engagement. As part of my talk, I described how CEO, corporate and employee activism got started and how far they had evolved. Someone asked me why it was that most of the CEO activism we have seen over the past few years is more likely to come from the left- than the right-side of the political spectrum. A great question whose answer has been repeatedly consistent since the business activism movement began. There are several reasons why this might be the case:

First, in the research on CEO activism among Americans that I spearheaded, Democrats were significantly more likely than Republicans and Independents to say CEOs should take positions on societal issues. Republicans were significantly more likely than Democrats and Independents to say CEOs should stick to their business and not take positions. Similarly, In a recent Harris Poll on CEO reputation, the findings revealed that Republicans (49%) compared to Democrats (26%) were more likely to agree that “CEOs are not politicians and should stay out of politics and issues that may offend customers, employees or shareholders.” Right-leaning CEOs are therefore less comfortable taking on a public role on sociopolitical issues. That has been remarkably consistent over the last six years.

Second, my former colleague Liz mentioned to me that she had recently read that conservatives are by nature conservative. They're not natural activists and tend to keep their views to themselves (or maybe just among themselves). That makes sense to me too in explaining why there are more left-leaning, progressive CEO advocates.

Another reason might be that former President Trump was the highly visible and amplified activist-in-chief for many CEOs who may have had far right-leaning stances on sociopolitical issues like immigration, climate change and social justice. The former president often spoke up on these hot button issues and I imagine that right-leaning CEOs had no interest in stealing or sharing the former president’s spotlight and possibly alienating employees and customers. In addition, right-leaning CEOs, as well as left-leaning CEOs, had no interest in being named in a former presidential tweet and take the chance of attracting the wrong kind of attention. There IS such a thing as bad publicity.

The few very conservative CEOs who have spoken up have faced fierce criticism on social media, seen boycotts, made headline news and have been threatened by law suits. CEOs like Michael Lindell of MyPillow who aligned with the former president about the election being rigged is now facing a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems. Lindell’s movie, Absolute Proof, on how Trump was defrauded, was taken off YouTube and Vimeo. The backlash can be quick and thunderous.

Just this week the CEO of Goya Foods, Robert Unanue, faces a boycott of the company’s products for having spoken at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, this past weekend in support of Trump’s contention that he lost the election due to election trickery. It should be pointed out that both Lindell and Unanue are more extreme than the majority of right-leaning CEOs and also lead privately-held companies (meaning that they do not have to worry about shareholders as publicly-held companies do). That in itself is a deterrent for any CEO. But it is interesting that Unanue did speak up at CPAC when he had committed to a vow of silence on Trump by his board. He might be in danger of losing his job now.

Hopefully, these ideas help explain why CEO activism is more pervasive among liberal and progressive circles. And a thank you to PAC for raising the question.