Sen. Marco Rubio asked Major League Commissioner Rob Manfred if he intends to give up his membership to Georgia’s Augusta National Golf Club, given that he pulled the league’s All-Star game out of the Peach State over the recently passed election reform bill.
Rubio, in a letter dated Monday, asked the league commissioner a litany of questions about where he and the league stand on a number of issues, days after the league pulled the game. The senator rhetorically asked if the league will end its “lucrative financial relationship” with the Chinese government given the treatment of Uyghur Muslims, or the league’s engagement with Cuba.
“I am, of course, under no expectation any of this will happen,” he wrote. “Taking the All-Star game out of Georgia is an easy way to signal virtues without significant financial fallout. But speaking out against the Chinese Communist Party would involve a significant loss of revenue and being closed out of a lucrative market.”
MLB TO MOVE ALL-STAR GAME AND DRAFT OUT OF GEORGIA IN VOTING LAW PROTEST
Rubio added, “Similarly, I am under no illusion you intend to resign as a member from Augusta National Golf Club. To do so would require a personal sacrifice, as opposed to the woke corporate virtue signaling of moving the All Star Game from Atlanta.”
There has been a strong partisan divide over the recently passed election reform bill. Republicans, who control the state legislature and the governorship, have not backed down from the bill, which they argue will make it harder for fraud to occur. Democrats, conversely, allege the changes will disenfranchise minority voters and say that is the bill’s underlying intent.
The bill will make numerous changes to the way elections work in the state. Some of the changes would alter the timing of runoff elections and the requirements for obtaining an absentee ballot. It will also present state officials with the authority to take over local election boards in certain circumstances, and it would make it a crime for anyone other than election workers to approach voters in line to give them food and water.
The law also codified the use of drop boxes, which were only approved as a coronavirus solution in 2020. They will be placed in early voting locations and can only be accessed during the business hours of the voting precinct.
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Each state controls how they run elections, and dozens are considering similar legislation to the bill that was passed in Georgia. As of March 24, legislators have introduced 361 bills with “restrictive provisions” in 47 states, an increase of 108 bills since Feb. 19, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal-leaning law and policy institute.
The federal government is also considering the issue of election reform. The House passed H.R. 1, a Democrat-backed bill that would drastically change the elections on a federal level, but it’s unlikely to pass the evenly divided Senate with the filibuster still intact.
