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After Georgia Governor Brian Kemp passed the restrictive and furtively racist voting bill SB 202, Major League Baseball decided to pull its All-Star game from Atlanta. Yet, some of the state’s largest employers remained eerily silent, notably Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola. But after the two aforementioned companies tardily spoke out against the measure and Coca-Cola CEO James Quincy openly denounced SB 202, Georgia’s Republican House of Representatives struck back at the beverage giant a few days later, no longer considering it “always the real thing.”
“Given Coke’s choice to cave to the pressure of an out of control cancel culture, we respectfully request all Coca-Cola Company products to be removed from our office suite immediately,” says the manifesto. “Should Coke chose (sic) to read the bill, share its true intentions and accept their role in the dissemination of mistruths, we would welcome a conversation to rebuild a working relationship.”
A few days before this newly written flare-up against Coca-Cola, House Speaker David Ralston spoke with the press and purposely cracked open a can of Pepsi in a closed-room meeting as a symbolic demonstration of his anger towards the company. He ominously told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “[Companies like Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines] like our public policy when we’re doing things that benefit them… You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand. You got to keep that in mind sometimes.”
It is worth noting that Coca-Cola has been providing lawmakers with their products for free and to persons irrespective of party affiliation. However, there is also a strong contingent of Democrat lawmakers and residents who consider the whole affair an elaborate dog-and-pony show between lawmakers and the corporations because this matter was brought up well before the March voting deadline, and big business opted to remain quiet.
Nevertheless, from their most recent statements to the press, Georgia Republican politicos will not take the public outcry lightly. “Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, and Delta may be scared of Stacey Abrams and Joe Biden and the left,” Governor Kemp warned the AJC, “but I am not.”
This brouhaha has found its way to the national spotlight, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is in full support of his fellow Republicans. “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order,” the Kentuckian said on Monday per CNN and Kentucky’s WAVE 3 News. He further added that “[o]ur private sector must stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex,” and that it has become “jaw-dropping to see powerful American institutions not just permit themselves to be bullied, but join in the bullying themselves… I just think it’s stupid.”
