Nike’s stock soared some 5 percent, a roughly $6 billion market value increase since Labor Day, in the wake of its controversial advertisement with Colin Kaepernick, a former NFL player largely seen as aligned with Democrats around issues of policing and criminal justice. Yet Nike employees are having it both ways–their political spending has gone more than three times toward Republicans compared to Democrats in this election cycle, according to the Center For Responsive Politics. Nike employees and its PAC contributed $424,000 to the Republican Party (78 percent of its political contributions) and its candidates so far in this 2018 election cycle, compared to only $122,000 to the Democrats, according to the Center. Nihal Krishan with the Center For Responsive Politics reports: With a couple notable exceptions like the 2008 and 2016 election cycles, Nike has a track record of giving much more to Republicans than Democrats in the past decade. During the 2010, 2012 and 2014 election cycles, Nike gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans, with 76 percent, 69 percent and 59 percent of their contributions going to the GOP in each of those cycles respectively. Nearly half of Nike’s political spending has come from individual contributions made by co-founder…
See original post: OP-ED: Nike’s Bipartisan Approach — Pay Kaepernick While Donating to Republicans