2nd Vote app helps consumers apply partisanship to their purchases

Holiday shoppers worried about inadvertently supporting left-wing causes when buying that turkey or computer game, take heart: There’s an app for that.

The Nashville-based company 2nd Vote offers a free app that allows consumers to check a company’s score on a liberal-to-conservative scale of 1 to 5. The ratings, which can be accessed via smartphone or the Internet, are based on the business’s direct and indirect donations to advocacy groups, as well as corporate sponsorships, lobbying efforts and company policies.

A year after launching, 2nd Vote recently passed more than 100,000 downloads for its app, which includes listings of both for-profit and nonprofit entities.

“We wanted to really create a tool and a resource available to conservatives to make better decisions about how their money is being spent,” said 2nd Vote executive director Chris Walker. “We’ve had really good results so far. It seems to resonate with a lot of people who want to see how they can align their dollars more with their values.”

The app was the brainchild of David Black, who’s married to Rep. Diane Black, Tennessee Republican. After he gave a donation a few years ago to the March of Dimes, she pulled him aside and informed him that the children’s charity funds Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.

“He’d been donating to March of Dimes ever since he was a kid, and he couldn’t believe it, and said, ’Well, where else is my money going to?’” said Mrs. Walker. “He gathered together some groups and some fellow conservatives and former campaign staffers and tried to figure out if we could build a database to show conservatives where their money is going.”

“So that’s how we came up with the idea of 2nd Vote: Your first vote is at the ballot box, but your second vote is where you spend your money,” Mr. Walker said.

The rankings are based on six policy categories: gun rights, education, corporate welfare, the environment, marriage and abortion. And there are a few surprises, such as the liberal 1.3 rating earned by Wal-Mart, whose founding Walton family has been associated with conservative causes.

The rating is based largely on Wal-Mart’s sponsorship of the left-wing Center for American Progress, which released a list of its corporate sponsors in December 2013. Pegging Wal-Mart as a supporter of the left may sound like heresy, but, “We kind of have to call it like we see it,” Mr. Walker said.

“We’ve had people approach us and say, ’Hey, Wal-Mart sells firearms, [so] how can they be bad on the Second Amendment?’” Mr. Walker said. “Yes, that’s true, but when their policy and their spending on public policy goes to the Center for American Progress, we have to acknowledge that and let their shoppers know that, ’Hey, when you do buy that firearm at Wal-Mart, you’re also in some way contributing to a radical left-wing group like the Center for American Progress.’”

On the other hand, the Wal-Mart PAC supported Republican and Democratic candidates fairly evenly in 2014 — the PAC even gave a campaign contribution to Mrs. Black — but 2nd Vote’s rating system doesn’t factor in political donations, Mr. Walker said.

The organization does routinely reassess its ratings as new information is released. Organizers are also trying to figure out how the ratings can better reflect other factors, such as Kroger’s recent refusal to ban concealed carry at its grocery stores despite pressure from gun control groups, he said.

Right now Kroger’s rating is a liberal-leaning 2.5 as a result of donations to groups like the Urban League that fund gun control programs, but “we want to show support for a company like that,” Mr. Walker said.

“Kroger really stood firm and said, ’This is the law, and we’re following the law, and we’ll continue to do so,’” Mr. Walker said. “That is something we’re looking at to figure out how we can better assess that.”

One thing that’s clear from the website is that conservative-donating companies are badly outnumbered by their pro-liberal counterparts. About 70 percent of the 500 companies rated fall into the liberal category, while most of the others receive a neutral rating of 2.8 to 3.0. Only a handful actively support conservative causes.

Which means that unless holiday shoppers can find all their gifts at Bass Pro Shops or Cabela’s, they may find themselves with little choice but to line indirectly the pockets of the left. That’s because liberal advocacy groups have been much more successful at pressuring companies for support, Mr. Walker said.

“We’re trying to provide a conservative counterbalance to the activism and activity on the left, which has been doing this for a very, very long time,” Mr. Walker said. “The liberals do this very well, and they’ve been very effective and getting companies to cater to their issue du jour.”

As a result, he said, conservatives often find themselves at a funding disadvantage and a “conventional wisdom disadvantage” on issues. Buying Under Armour athletic socks instead of Nike may not seem like a big deal, but in the long run putting consumer pressure on companies to stop funding liberal advocacy groups may help level the playing field in policy debates.

“Neutrality is a good thing,” Mr. Walker said. “If we can help steer companies away from all the bullying from the left for 30 years and just get back to neutral, we feel that conservatives on the issues can win on a level playing field. Far too often it’s not a level playing field.”