Sen. Tom Cotton has directed his team to call corporations that halted donations to Republicans who objected to President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory and ask if they plan to apply that standard to House Democrats attempting to overturn an Iowa congressional race.
On Friday, a senior campaign aide to the Arkansas Republican’s was contacting 16 major corporations the political action committees of which have ceased contributions to House and Senate Republicans who voted on Jan. 6 against certifying electoral votes from states where Biden defeated former President Donald Trump. The aide was attempting to secure a public commitment that Democrats who support unseating Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, the certified winner in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, will similarly see PAC donations cut off.
“If the businesses who condemned Republicans in January don’t condemn Democrats for doing the same, everyone will question whether these companies are truly committed to free elections,” Cotton said in a statement.
The companies on Cotton’s call list include Airbnb, Amazon, Best Buy, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cisco, Dell, Disney, Dow Chemical, Hallmark, Intel, Marriott, Mastercard, Nike, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Verizon. The effort comes after Cotton issued a letter calling on corporations to “condemn” Democrats who support vacating Miller-Meeks’s 2020 election to Congress, same as they did Republicans who voted to throw out the results of the 2020 presidential election.
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The Cotton letter also was signed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Iowa’s two senators, Republicans Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley. It was sent to a wide array of corporations and industry trade associations that expressed reservations about contributing to the GOP after a majority of House Republicans and seven Senate Republicans objected to Biden’s state-certified victories in as many as a half-dozen battleground states.
Cotton, pointedly, was not among them. The potential 2024 presidential candidate worked with McConnell behind the scenes to quash opposition to certification in the Senate.
Republicans in Washington are growing alarmed at what they believe is a clear attempt by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and House Democrats generally to bolster their thin majority by unseating Miller-Meeks and replacing her with vanquished Democratic opponent Rita Hart. Miller-Meeks was certified the winner in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District by six votes out of more than 394,000 cast. But Hart has refused to concede and is asking the House to toss the results of an election that went through multiple recounts.
The House has ultimate authority in the matter, and the committee of jurisdiction, the House Administration Committee, is reviewing Hart’s challenge. The Democrat declined to press her claims in court that the election was incorrectly decided. Presumably, Hart figured her case would receive a more sympathetic reception in the House, where Democrats control the levers of power and have the votes to install her in place of Miller-Meeks.
Hart’s challenge is reminiscent of the aftermath of the November election. Trump refused to concede to Biden, citing unfounded claims that the election was stolen and pleaded for Congress to deliver him a second term by objecting to his opponent’s state-certified electoral votes. The controversy led to an insurrection at the United States Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, the day of the Electoral College certification process.
Some House Democrats are expressing opposition to unseating Miller-Meeks. But Republicans find it galling that Pelosi and the majority of her caucus did not immediately reject Hart’s challenge, especially after months of being lectured to by Democrats and corporate America about the sacredness of upholding certified elections and being held responsible for the political excesses of Trump and some of their colleagues.
“Speaker Pelosi should have declined to get involved and applied the same standard that she stated just a few weeks ago: certified elections need to be honored,” Cotton wrote in his letter. “Instead, Speaker Pelosi started the process to take the election away from the people of Iowa to allow the House of Representatives to vote on a party-line basis on who should fill the seat.”
