Valley Of The Pols
When the GOP presidential candidates debated earlier this month, moderator Judy Woodruff of CNN asked the men if they went online. George W. Bush said he sends e-mail. When asked if he was familiar with the World Wide Web, Bush replied, "I can click and surf around."
When Al Gore was asked the same question at the Democrats' Los Angeles debate, the vice president acknowledged that while he did not invent the Internet, he did help secure funding to transform the Defense Department's DARPANET into the system we know today.
Clearly Gore knows how to send e-mail - and then some. So he should be the king of fund-raising in Silicon Valley, right? Read error message.
Click herecolor> to find out where the leading lights of Silcon Valley are sending their campaign donations.color>
A report compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization that tracks special interests, shows that Bush raised more than twice as much money ($698,033) as Gore did from the computer industry in 1999. When you add contributions from Silicon Valley venture capitalists, Bush's take tops $1 million.
| Computer Industry Contributions to Presidential Candidates Bradley: $333,235 Buchanan: $7,845 Bush: $698,033 Gore: $330,285 Keyes: $6,250 McCain: $140,536 Total: $1.5 million Total for Clinton and Dole in 1996: $265,350 (source: Center for Responsive Politics; based on figures released by FEC on 2/1/00) |
But Westine's Democratic counterpart at TechNet, Jeff Modisett, predicts the contributions will even out now that Bill Bradley's out of the picture. Bradley raised almost as much Silicon Valley cash as Gore, and their combined contributions nearly equal Bush's. Modisett thinks Gore's understanding of technology sits well with executives. He also believes Bush benefited from his early status as a sure thing. "If you're starting up a dot com, failure is a badge of honor," says Modisett. "But when you're looking to the future, you want to bet on a winne."
No matter who attracts the most computer industry dollars, everyone agrees there's plenty more where that came from. According to the CRP, contributions to federal parties and their candidates doubled between the 1992 and 1996 election seasons, and so far the presidential candidates have raised about six times the amount raised by President Clinton and Bob Dole during the entire 1996 cycle.
Silicon Valley now rivals Hollywood as a magnet for politicians on the West Coast. TechNet, which is comprised of more than 190 CEOs from the worlds of high tech and venture capitalism, hosted more than 200 meetings and fund-raisers for elected officials and political leaders in 1999. At least a quarter of the U.S. Senate visited last Silicon Valley in December alone.
So far, giving is split among the two parties. TechNet's Westine and Modisett agree that Silicon Valley is driven more by policy than partisan ideology. "These executives don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican," says Westine; it's your record on the issues that counts.
Holly Bailey, an investigative reporter for CRP, would be the first to agree. She sees lobbying offices for the industry opening "every day" in Washington, and they're getting results. Viewed as visionary and cutting edge (two adjectives that politicians like), technology issues appear to receive disproportionate attention on Capitol Hill.
"In the small amount of things that get done (in Congress) much of it has to do with the computer industry," says Bailey.
Congress' efforts to stem Y2K liabilities are just one example of money-driven politics. The most prominent example is the current effort to again raise the cap on temporary immigration visas (H-1B work visas) which increase the cost of skilled labor. According to Bailey's research, four of the top ten recipients of computer industry dollars in the Senate are members of the Judiciary Committee, which voted to raise the cap last week.
Silicon Valley, once considered apolitical, jumped into action in 1995 after President Clinton vetoed a bill that impeded shareholder lawsuits. The president, who had been viewed as a friend to the high-tech industry, apparently conceded to a competing special interest - trial lawyers - and eventually suffered an override from Congress. In 1996 and 1998, Republicans won the majority of contributions from high-tech executives.
TechNet was created in 1996 after Silicon Valley executives pooled their resources (and some $40 million) to defeat state Proposition 211, a ballot initiative that would have made shareholder lawsuits easier to file in California courts.
Bailey notes that computer industry contributions stepped up dramatically at the latter end of 1997, when Microsoft's legal troubles began. It was "definitely a wakeup call," she says.
The sum total of money from the cmputer industry still lags far behind the amounts given by other special interest groups. Bailey says the courting process has only just begun: "It's like a junior-high dance. (They've) just noticed each other."