As I explained in my book Political Brands and in a law review article entitled “Shooting Your Brand in the Foot,” corporate political spending comes with many reputational risks including associating a well-crafted corporate brand with a toxic politician. If a politician that a corporation has supported gets into an embarrassing scandal or legal trouble, the corporation can be harmed through guilt by association. This can lead to boycotts and other shunning. Also if the political spending is being done transparently through a corporate PAC, then there’s another lesson to hard learn: Records of political spending online last forever. Even if firms stop giving to Sens. Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz today, all their past political support is easy to find on sources like http://www.followthemoney.org or http://www.opensecrets.org. For forever and a day, the public, including a firm’s shareholders and customers, can find which corporate PACs supported Donald Trump or his congressional enablers.

The risks of corporate political spending after the Jan. 6 insurrection | Column