How Target's Anti-Gay Political Donations Might End Up Being Wasted Money

Perhaps no company made more of a news splash this election cycle than retail giant Target, which earlier this summer gave a six figure donation to support a political candidate in Minnesota with some severe anti-gay positions. That candidate, Minnesota Republican Tom Emmer, believes that gay people shouldn't be allowed to raise children, that gay marriage should be banned by the Constitution, and that it's perfectly okay for Christian activists to advocate violence toward LGBT people.

(Emmer, after all, gave money to a Christian ministry in Minnesota, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, whose founder has said gay people are sick, that they are pedophiles, and that countries that kill gay people are moral.)

To say that Target received some blowback for their donation might be the understatement of the year.Tens of thousands of people wrote the company demanding that they stop funding anti-gay politics, a boycott page on Facebook attracted over 80,000 members, and a separate page on Facebook,Money I Would Have Spent at Target, has tracked more than $500,000 that consumers spent elsewhere because of Target's donation to support Emmer.

And what's particularly ironic, at least if you're a Target executive, is that as Election Day looms, it looks like Emmer, the candidate they shimmied up to, might lose. And if that happens, Target will be left post-Election Day without a Governor in their back pocket, yet with tens of thousands of consumers still boycotting the company for turning their back on the LGBT community. Talk about a lose-lose situation for the company, and one that could have totally been preventable if the company had decided to keep its money out of politics.

Nobody knows how the gubernatorial election in Minnesota will end up, but poll after poll after pollshows that Emmer is losing to Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate Mark Dayton. The Humphrey Institute and Minnesota Public Radio are out with a poll that shows Dayton leading by 12 (which seems pretty high, but certainly underscores where this race is trending).

If Dayton does end up winning (again, Election Day isn't until tomorrow, and forces well beyond Target are trying to help defeat him), Target will have spent $150,000 to essentially buy itself the worst public relations boondoggle of the entire year. Talk about a stupid company move.

This is an important gubernatorial election in Minnesota, in part because the state could be primed to take up the issue of marriage equality in the next year or two. Mark Dayton? He supports the right of same-sex couples to get married. Tom Emmer? He most certainly doesn't.

What a shame that Target decided to weigh in on this race in the first place. Because when same-sex marriage becomes legal in Minnesota (and it will, eventually, whether under a Governor Dayton or under another person's tenure), think of all the couples that would have registered at Target, if the company wouldn't have cast its lot in 2010 with one of the most anti-gay politicians in the country.

Photo credit: NateOne

by Michael A. Jones  gayrights.change.org