PolicyEngage, a company that provides digital services to political organizations, has refused to do business with author and terrorism expert Brigitte Gabriel’s organization, ACT for America, because of one of its other clients — the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
“They told me they wouldn’t work with me because they work with the SPLC,” said Robert Maxwell, director of communications for ACT. “They went from interested to working with me to not.”
The SPLC, which is regularly criticized for smearing mainstream conservative organizations as racist or extremist, has labeled Gabriel’s organization a “hate group.” ACT for America strongly condemns the characterization.
In a comment to Breitbart News, PolicyEngage CEO Steven Marciniak said that his company refused service to ACT to avoid a conflict of interest with the SPLC.
“Although some tech companies may have a bias against conservatives, this is certainly not the case with PolicyEngage (formerly TrackBill),” said Marciniak. “Since our founding, we have placed a high value on maintaining a culture that promotes diversity of thought with our employees as well as remaining non-partisan with our users.”
“We make every attempt to avoid any known conflicts of interest involving our existing clients and have turned down select new business opportunities when a clear conflict becomes known. Southern Poverty Law Center is one of PolicyEngage’s largest clients and like any good capitalist, we are focused on retaining our clients.”
Maxwell said that ACT planned to use PolicyEngage’s services to track legislation related to Iran.
“We were going to implement TrackBill to modernize our system of tracking legislation because Act for America does a considerable amount of work passing legislation we deem key to national security,” said Maxwell. ”
“For example, we’ve passed a lot of legislation to keep Iran in check over the past years and given recent escalation we’re proud of that work. Is this is the work Trackbill and the SPLC thinks is so hateful?”
Maxwell pointed to ACT’s work helping 19 states to pass the Iranian Divestment Bill, which imposes restrictions on companies that do business with the Iranian energy and finance sectors.
States that have passed the bill include Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and New York.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.