On December 5, right-wing culture warriors instructed lawmakers attending the American Legislative Exchange Council’s States and Nation Policy Summit in Washington, D.C., on the steps their states can take to upend policies and practices designed to help address the unfolding climate emergency and diversify workforces.
CRC Advisors Senior Vice President Mike Thompson led the workshop “Battles Won, War Continues: The Left, ESG and State Policy,” according to materials obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). In 2020, Greg Mueller and Leonard Leo, who played an integral role in Trump’s effort to pack the federal judiciary with right-wing judges, founded CRC Advisors — the group Thompson represents — to “funnel big money and expertise across the conservative movement.”
Although not as well known as Leo, Thompson, a member of ALEC’s private sector advisory board, is an important Christian Right operative who plays multiple leadership roles in campaigns and communications.
Thompson’s public relations skills were on full display in his remarks demonizing the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), “a global coalition of leading financial institutions committed to accelerating the decarbonization of the economy” in order to preserve the planet from further destruction.
Thompson argued that large asset managers and banks that participate in GFANZ — including BlackRock, State Street, Wells Fargo, City Bank, Morgan Stanley, Chase, and Bank of America — are breaking antitrust law by utilizing sustainable investment strategies.
Thompson provided an example of a lawsuit against BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard filed last month by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and 10 other Republican attorneys general — all active members of the fossil-fuel backed Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) — alleging that the three companies violated antitrust law in colluding to raise electricity prices through their investments.
“The states have filed an antitrust lawsuit and they detail in it all of the evidence where those three companies were colluding to keep coal in the ground and from coming to market, thus, driving up the price and violating antitrust law,” Thompson told workshop participants.
The PR professional neglected to mention that CRC Advisors is a paid consultant of RAGA or that his boss Leo’s Concord Fund has funneled $3.5 million to the pay-to-play group this year and $20.3 million since the organization was founded in 2014, according to CMD’s analysis of its tax filings.
Sal Nuzzo, the first workshop presenter, is executive director of Consumers Defense, the sister organization of Consumers’ Research, which is a vice-chairman sponsor of ALEC’s summit and a driver of the right-wing’s manufactured crisis around “woke” capitalism.
Nuzzo argued that reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 through renewable energy production would force Americans to cede “two-thirds of [the] U.S. electricity generation supply chain to the Communist Party of China.” He didn’t cite a source for this claim, nor does the group’s website provide any research substantiating it.
Nuzzo also attempted to raise the alarm with lawmakers from states that depend on agriculture by claiming that the Left has “shifted their attacks and tactics into the agriculture space” in response to anti-ESG legislation passed over the last three legislative cycles and has moved to prevent farmers from getting access to loans.
“The [Left’s] coordinated attacks on agriculture are occurring at all levels. They’re at the producer level. They’re at the distributor level. They’re at the consumption and sales level,” Nuzzo claimed. “If farming interests cannot get financing, [farmers] cannot operate.”
Paul Watkins, founder of Fusion Law and both a senior legal fellow at Consumers’ Research and a special counsel with Heritage Action, made a number of claims in his presentation based on his belief that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are discriminatory, and therefore illegal. As a member of ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force, he is involved in drafting and voting on most of the group’s pro-fossil fuel policies alongside lawmakers and polluting industry lobbyists.
During his presentation, Watkins claimed that setting diversity hiring goals like JP Morgan Chase’s 2024 target of hiring 4,000 Black students is discriminatory. This is based on an unsubstantiated assumption that a company with more than 300,000 employees would make new hires based solely on an applicant’s skin color rather than on other critical hiring criteria such as education, work experience, references, and suitability for the position in question.
“There’s no such thing as systemic racism,” Watkins proclaimed, and he didn’t stop there. He went on to rail against the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and its corporate equality index, which tracks corporations’ commitments to equality and inclusive workplaces for LGBTQ+ employees. He attacked higher education accreditors for requiring colleges and universities to uphold DEI standards, and lamented that the proxy voting and shareholder proposal process benefits net zero advocates.
When Catherine Gunsalus, director of state advocacy at Heritage Action, spoke, she described Heritage as a “resource bank” for “engagement strategies,” telling attendees that the group has “lobbyists across the country in 30 states and [is] happy to be a resource, not just on the model policy side, but also on the air cover side, media, op eds, myth versus fact.” As an aside, she added, “In fact, I have not heard an argument from some of the opposition that’s actually true.”
Gunsalus spoke about actions taken by Republican allies in state legislatures since 2021, saying, “about 20 states have codified some type of legislative protection to fight back on this net zero agenda, specifically or particularly in the area of pensions or fiduciary duty or on state contracts.” She also referenced other examples to combat ESG, including attorneys general investigations/actions, agency fact-finding letters, legislative hearings, and executive orders by governors, state AGs, treasurers, and secretaries of state.
Gunsalus urged lawmakers in attendance to focus on the following model policies from Heritage, the climate denialist Heartland Institute, and Consumers Defense during the upcoming 2025 legislative sessions:
- Pension Fiduciary Act: Prohibits anyone managing state, local, or university public pensions from considering the climate emergency or other social or political factors when investing pension funds.
- Grid Reliability Act: Promotes energy generated from fossil fuels over renewables under the guise that it’s more affordable and reliable.
- Farmer Protection Act: Bans financial institutions from considering farmers’ greenhouse gas emissions or carbon footprint when making decisions about financial services, empowers the commissioner of agriculture to conduct investigations, and authorizes the attorney general to impose civil penalties for violations of the law.
- Eliminate Economic Boycotts Act: Bars companies with 10 or more employees from receiving state contracts if they take into account any “social, political, or ideological interests” to limit their commercial relations with fossil fuel-based energy, timber, mining, or agriculture — and instructs legislatures to “insert additional state-specific boycotting criteria.” The model also empowers the state to police corporate speech for violations.
- Keep Accreditation About Academics Act: Prohibits higher education accrediting agencies from considering DEI policies in accreditation decisions and empowers the attorney general to enforce the law.
One other policy prescription that would aid anti-ESG zealots in their fight was introduced during the Q&A session following the panel. Thompson recommended through “an executive order or a really, really simple bill or amendment [to] require pension funds to produce a report once a year of how all of [their] shares and all of [their] assets were loaded.”
The CRC Advisors VP also advised lawmakers to turn to State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF) CEO OJ Oleka (who was in attendance) as a resource. “OJ works with all of the Republican state treasurers doing a whole lot of great work in this space,” he said.
As the PR firm for SFOF, Thompson and CRC Advisors are deeply involved in sustaining the Right’s manufactured crisis around ESG, as CMD reported.
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