A company formerly tied to candidate Nate Morris has recently scrubbed its website of posts dating back years by the former CEO on topics such as DEI, ESG, and Black Lives Matter that could be politically damaging to the Republican.
The since-deleted posts were from Morris’s time as CEO of Rubicon Technologies, a large waste and recycling software services company he founded in 2008 and severed ties with in 2023. The removal of these posts was not previously reported.
His GOP opponents, Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) and former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, previously used them to fuel attacks questioning Morris’s conservative credentials.
A Morris campaign spokesperson said Morris was not involved in the posts being taken down. It’s unclear exactly when they were removed, but they remained active in the weeks or months leading up to Morris officially launching his campaign last week. The spokesperson confirmed Morris has had no involvement in Rubicon in recent years and has no financial ties to the public company.
“Nate has no operational control, insight, or involvement in Rubicon, and hasn’t for years,” Morris campaign spokesman Conor McGuinness said. “He doesn’t own a share of stock in Rubicon. He has absolutely nothing to do with their website.”
Rubicon did not respond to requests for comment and detailed questions, including the reason and timing of removing the posts.
The GOP contest is the most recent episode of a Senate primary embroiled in culture war policies that conservatives say are “woke” liberal ideologies.
Texas’s contentious Senate Republican primary between Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and state Attorney General Ken Paxton has also spotlighted culture war issues like DEI. Other bitter GOP primaries that are likely to crop up in Senate battlegrounds like North Carolina and Georgia could follow suit.
The first Rubicon post, from 2019, touted Morris’s promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion by signing the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge. The post, which now directs to an error page, stated its three main objectives were to “have complex discussions about diversity and inclusion, to implement and expand upon unconscious bias education, and to share best and unsuccessful diversity and inclusion practices.”
The second post, from June 2020, came in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter racial justice protests, some of which turned violent. The post, which now directs to an error page, was a company-wide message from Morris announcing an all-hands meeting to discuss recent events and defending the protests that he said were “a manifestation of the pain and anger that so many are feeling.”
The third post, from the fall of 2020, was from Morris announcing a new member to its board of directors and detailing the company’s dedication to environmental, social, and corporate governance. The post, which now directs to an error page, said Morris was committed to “ensuring that Rubicon remained at the forefront of the ESG movement.”
Morris distanced himself from the posts in a statement, in some cases going a step further than he’s previously done when addressing the content of the posts.
He said “ESG terrorists” make it hard to start businesses like Rubicon and others “unless company leadership embraces their agenda,” that he was “trying to be empathetic to my employees who were struggling with what happened” after Floyd’s murder, and that his former executive experience “has totally radicalized me against ESG and DEI, and I’m going to make it my mission to end this crap once and for all.”
Morris further noted that he was an early investor in Strive, the anti-ESG and anti-DEI investment fund run by former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Barr and Cameron have used Morris’s former positions as a business executive to paint him as a fake conservative. Morris has touted his unwavering loyalty to President Donald Trump and announced his candidacy on a podcast hosted by Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. In an ad highlighting his deep ties to the waste management industry, Morris says it’s “garbage day in Kentucky” to oust career politicians and calls himself a “Trump America First conservative” while hanging from the back of a moving garbage truck.
DEI rose to prominence in corporate culture in the wake of the George Floyd protests and former President Joe Biden formalizing such priorities through executive orders. But the public tides have shifted with Trump’s resurgence, who has overturned his predecessor’s efforts. Supreme Court rulings have also chipped away at racial preferences in the workplace, which has fueled the chilling effect on Corporate America, which has widely reversed DEI, ESG, and related policies.
Barr has accused Morris of having “championed radical DEI policies” and “pretending to be MAGA now.” Cameron has levied similar attacks, saying Morris “prioritized woke hiring policies at his business.”
Kentucky First Action, the super PAC supporting Cameron, said in a statement through adviser Samantha Bullock that Morris “is a complete and total fraud who knows his record as a woke CEO is a problem for his political makeover.” Bullock accused him of trying to delete his record, which the Morris campaign vehemently denied.
Barr and Cameron also carried their own cultural war baggage that made both candidates vulnerable to attacks. They supported initiatives that critics say should be more heavily scrutinized.
Barr has been criticized by the conservative Club for Growth for voting to raise the debt ceiling and earmarking federal funding for DEI programs in Kentucky. He’s also helped secure past financing for programs that benefit minorities and women and re-entry for incarcerated people.
Cameron, prior to being elected attorney general, supported easing the state’s bail system, including moving to a cashless model. He also backed efforts to slow incarceration rates that prosecutors criticized as “haphazard” and “dangerous,” and expressed a desire during his attorney general race to bridge the divide between law enforcement and Black Lives Matter.
Both men also have close and long-standing ties to McConnell, an unpopular Republican in MAGA world for being what Trump supporters consider to be insufficiently loyal and too willing to compromise.
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McGuinness referred to Barr and Cameron as the “McConnell boys” and said that Morris “is the only political outsider in this race, the only candidate not owned by Mitch McConnell, and the only candidate Donald Trump can trust in the U.S. Senate to deliver his America First agenda.”
The Cameron and Barr campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.
