The influence of corporate in politics is growing in the United States after the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Previous literature on corporate political activities (CPA) has focused on its strategic aspect – how it could shape economic and social conditions in which firms can thrive. However, this paper adopts alternative views on CPA and studies its constraining effect. This study argues that past CPA will shape the generalized understanding of the firms (“organizational character”) and audience’s expectations on their behavior, thereby constraining the firm’s future decisions in politicized domain. More specifically, this paper investigates the effect of the firm’s past CPA on their decision in shareholder-value oriented downsizing. Workforce downsizing as a strategy to remedy market performance decline is a politically contested issue, as it directly harms labor interest while boosting shareholder value. This paper hypothesizes that the negative relationship between market performance and downsizing announcement will be less significant among Democratic-leaning firms, as they will avoid deviating from their established political identity to evade penalization from the audience (e.g., being perceived as opportunistic and untrustworthy). Based on the data of Fortune 500 firms and their downsizing announcements between 2011 and 2017, the empirical analysis of this study supports the hypothesis. This study aims to contribute to the literature on CPA by illustrating how it gets firm embedded in the interdependent network of social evaluation. I expect that the findings of this study will inform how firms navigate through complex political environments.