Duke is still reeling from a public shellacking in North Carolina for how it handled its merger with Progress Energy. It fired Progress CEO Bill Johnson, who was set to head the merged company, barely twenty minutes after the merger became official this summer. N.C. regulators who had to approve the merger felt deceived by the action.
Wednesday's protests were more political in nature. Duke is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC. It bills itself as nonpartisan but has endorsed and been providing state legislatures and lawmakers with a template of conservative policies, some of them quite controversial such as "Stand Your Ground" gun laws and voter ID legislation which some view as voter suppression schemes. That has prompted a lot of activists to call on companies to drop their membership.
Duke Energy is a prime target, especially during the Democratic National Convention this week. Duke's chief executive Jim Rogers played a big role in getting the DNC here and Duke has underwritten some of the convention and provided the DNC with a huge line of credit.
So it was no surprise that activists cornered Rogers this week and reportedly tried to get him to pledge that Duke would drop its membership. Rogers reportedly told Whit Jones of the Energy Action Coalition that "he'd be listening," when Jones asked if he'd listen to the 100,000 who've allegedly signed petitions for Duke to drop its ALEC ties. When pressed for a firm commitment to drop ALEC Rogers reportedly said "I'm not going to give you [a commitment right now] but you can trust that I'm paying attention to what you're saying, and you'll know in due time."
The activists are putting on a full court press, getting Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer to say he would urge Duke to “get out of ALEC ASAP.”
Other members of Congress apparently are urging the same. Duke is in an embarrassing spot. The activists gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Knight Theater made sure they felt the heat Wednesday.
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