Target’s longtime PAC stayed in middle-of-road, avoided oncoming traffic

This year, the company PAC has already donated just under $400,000 to candidates and partisan PACs, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

In both the PAC and direct donations, Minnesota liberals and moderates loom large. In fact, the PAC seems to skew away from candidates obsessed with extreme cultural issues (probably wish they’d stayed with that approach), giving some credence to Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel’s claim in his recent letter to employees that “Target has a history of supporting organizations and candidates, on both sides of the aisle, who seek to advance policies aligned with our business objectives.” (As has been widely reported, Steinhafel personally has donated generously to state Republicans for years.).

Sure, the antiqued, circuitous system of using employee PACs to funnel money to politicians is pretty different from this Brave-New-Wild-West-World following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, but with campaign finance reform being threatened in Washington and significant portions of the public reacting angrily to direct corporate donations organized by CEOs with sometimes well-entrenched political biases, it’s not likely these PAC operations will be scrapped of influence any time soon.