Fwd: FC: Why does Silicon Valley vote against itself? by J.Glassman

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Mar 15 10:27:28 PST 2001


[via Declan McCullagh}

<http://www.spectator.org/archives/0103TAS/glassman0103.htm>

The American Spectator -- March 2001

Smart Nerds, Foolish Choices

Why Silicon Valley votes against its interests

by James K. Glassman

One of the deepest mysteries of this New Age is why Silicon Valley --

as a geographic metaphor for smart, productive high-technologists

around the country--prefers Democrats to Republicans. In the

presidential election, for example, voters in the two counties in the

peninsula south of San Francisco--Santa Mateo and Santa Clara -- chose

Al Gore over George W. Bush, 63 percent to 32 percent, with 4 percent

for Ralph Nader.

Republicans have given far more support to the issues that high-tech

executives say are dear to them: expanding visas for skilled

immigrants, giving China the same trade status as other countries,

limiting the power of trial lawyers to blackmail technology companies

for damages over Y2K software failures and practically anything else.

"If you look at all these issues," says Rep. Dick Armey, "Republicans

are their friends."

So what's the problem? Rick White--the former Republican congressman

for the Washington state district that includes Redmond, home of

Microsoft -- told me that shortly after the GOP sweep in 1994, Bill

Gates sat down with Newt Gingrich. "Why don't more high-tech execs

support us?" the new speaker asked. "We are the party of

entrepreneurial values."

Gates replied: "We do agree on business and economic issues, but we

have hesitation on social issues."

A few years later, when Bill Clinton's Justice Department went after

Microsoft on antitrust charges, Gates learned that, for a high-tech

CEO, business issues trump social issues. But most of his colleagues

haven't absorbed that lesson yet.

Last year, Armey, the House majority leader, went to Silicon Valley to

drum up support for his "e-contract"--a set of bills to help tech

firms, including setting a standard for digital signatures and keeping

a moratorium on new Internet taxes. Armey spoke for half an hour, then

invited questions from the floor. The tech executives ignored the

substance of his talk and instead asked questions that might have come

from a gathering of the Urban League or the National Organization for

Women. The final question to a flabbergasted Armey: "Why is it that

you Republicans are so obsessed about abortion?"

Why is Silicon Valley oblivious to the policy concerns that can shape

the economy and their own businesses? "My explanation for it," Armey

told me, "is that they have prospered for all these years, independent

of government and indifferent to it.... They came at politics from a

personal point of view. Then, all of a sudden, things changed, and

they didn't seem to be able to make the transition from the politics

of the heart to the politics of the brain."

In other words, the opposition to Republicans appears almost

aesthetic. Yes, Democrats may have tastes that fit better with Silicon

Valley lifestyles. Democrats and Valley technologists may like the

same music, drink the same latte, drive the same model of Volvo. But

they don't share Silicon Valley's ideas about the New Economy. In the

end, Democrats want to run your business. They are on the side of

higher taxes, more regulation, more lawsuits. It is snobbish and

shortsighted for Silicon Valley technologists and entrepreneurs to

shun a party that shares their free-market values but, perhaps, not

their styles and tastes.

[...]

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