Saturday, July 27, 2013

And Here We Go Again...Target Denies Indirectly Supporting Anti-Gay Candidate Ken Cuccinelli


Retail chain Target has denied it has indirectly supported the Virginia gubernatorial campaign of Ken Cuccinelli, an outspoken opponent of gay rights.
Right Wing Watch made the accusation on Thursday.
“[T]he company is indirectly funding one of the most extreme anti-gay culture warriors in the country, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli,” the group wrote in a post.
“Target reports that in the first half of this year, it contributed $50,000 to the Republican Governors Association, which so far this year has spent nearly $3 million on behalf of Cuccinelli's gubernatorial campaign.”
 The watchdog group did note that Target also donated an equal amount of money to the Democratic Governors Association.
In 2010, Target, a vocal supporter of LGBT rights, was forced to apologize for funding campaign ads on behalf of Tom Emmer's unsuccessful bid to run Minnesota. Emmer is also a Republican opposed to gay rights.
In a statement, Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder denied the allegations.
“Target's commitment to the LGBT community is long-standing and unwavering,” Snyder said.
“We also believe strongly in our civic responsibility to engage in a bipartisan manner at the state and federal level in order to learn about public policy priorities and advocate on issues that affect our business, such as fairness legislation. One of the ways we do this is through membership in both the Democratic and Republican Governors Associations, both of which include several hundred other corporate members. When paying for our memberships, we explicitly require that our dues not be used for any individual electoral campaigns or other electioneering efforts. It would therefore be wrong and inaccurate to associate our membership dues with any particular political candidate or campaign.”
Right Wing Watch's Miranda Blue responded: “It's hard to tell how supporting an organization that says its 'primary mission is to help elect Republicans to governorships throughout the nation' doesn't amount to supporting Republican candidates for governorships.”

2 comments:

Unknown said...

They really should just pay their employees better and stay out of the politicians for sale business.

Ulf Raynor said...

Target got caught before contributing to anti-gay causes and backing anti-gay politicians.
The dual donation thing is a red herring so they can still donate to tea party whack jobs.