With Yahoo becoming the latest company to cut ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council in a matter of days, it’s official: ALEC has lost favor with tech giants. ALEC is the right-wing organization that writes model legislation on everything from unions to regulations and tries to push it at the state level. Its tally of losses now includes Microsoft, which quit in August, Google, Yelp, and possibly Facebook.
Google, the only company to explain its reasoning for quitting, attributed it to the conservative state network’s position on the climate. “Everyone understands climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place,” CEO Eric Schmidt told the Diane Rehm Show. “And so we should not be aligned with such people — they’re just, they’re just literally lying.”
ALEC has been shedding donors for a while now. Before, the issue was guns. Following the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012, and the ensuing controversy, the organization’s part in advancing pro-gun Stand Your Ground laws lost it Amazon, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Kraft, McDonald’s, and Walmart.
